Foreign governments evacuated diplomats, staff and others trapped in Sudan on Sunday as rival generals battled for a ninth day.
Fighting raged in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum, residents said, despite a hoped-for cease-fire to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
More than 420 people, including 264 civilians, have been killed and more than 3,700 have been wounded in the fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
In Sunday's fighting, a senior military official said army and police repelled an RSF attack on Kober Prison in Khartoum where Sudan’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, and former officials in his movement have been imprisoned since his ouster in 2019. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said a number of prisoners fled but al-Bashir and other high-profile inmates were still held in a “highly secure” area. The official said “a few prisoners” were killed or wounded.
The RSF claimed later Sunday that the military removed al-Bashir and other prisoners from the facility, although the statement could not be independently confirmed.
The ongoing violence has paralyzed the main international airport, destroying civilian planes and damaging at least one runway. Other airports also have been knocked out of operation.
After a week of bloody battles that hindered rescues, US special forces swiftly evacuated 70 US Embassy staffers from Khartoum to Ethiopia early Sunday. Although American officials said it was too dangerous for a government-coordinated evacuation of private citizens, other countries scrambled to remove citizens and diplomats.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted that UK armed forces evacuated British diplomatic staff and their families "amid a significant escalation in violence and threats.” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said over 1,200 military personnel were involved.
France, Greece, Jordan and other nations also organized flights. The Netherlands sent two Hercules C-130 planes and an Airbus A330 to Jordan for 152 Dutch citizens who made their way from Sudan to an undisclosed evacuation point, but “not without risks," said Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren. Italy, seeking to extract 140 of its nationals, sent military jets to Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden, said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
Ankara began operations at dawn on Sunday, taking some of its estimated 600 nationals by road from two Khartoum districts and the southern city of Wad Madani.
But plans were postponed from one site in Khartoum after "explosions" near a mosque designated as the assembly area, the embassy said.
Overland travel through contested areas has proven dangerous. Khartoum is about 840 kilometers (520 miles) from Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
On Saturday, Saudi Arabia said it evacuated 157 people, including 91 Saudi nationals and citizens of other countries.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled Khartoum and other hot spots, according to UN agencies, but millions are sheltering in their homes from explosions, gunfire and looting without adequate electricity, food or water.
The power struggle between the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has dealt a harsh blow to Sudan's hopes for a democratic transition. The rival generals came to power after a pro-democracy uprising led to the ouster of the former strongman, al-Bashir. In 2021, the generals joined forces to seize power in a coup.
The current violence came after Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
