The United States on Friday evacuated approximately 300 Americans from war-torn Sudan with buses as armed American drones flew high above the convoy, keeping a close eye out for potential threats.
U.S. had received assurances from the warring parties before they embarked on the evacuation as the United Nations and numerous other countries have also evacuated their citizens overland, as reported by The New York Times.
It raised new concerns about why the United States had taken so long to plan a civilian evacuation from Sudan, which was home to approximately 16,000 Americans, many of whom were dual nationals, when Western and Persian Gulf allies had moved faster and evacuated many more people.
The British since Tuesday, have evacuated 1573 people from an Airfield North of Khartoum, most of them British citizens. Another 1,700 people were airlifted out of harm’s way by Germany and France. According to Saudi authorities, at least 3,000 more people from various nations were evacuated by boat from Port Sudan to Jeddah.
Other nations are almost done with their evacuation efforts, while America is just ramping up its own. The British government announced on Friday that it would stop operating its airlift at 6 p.m. on Saturday due to a significant decline in demand for seats.
The difference might stem from the United States taking a more cautious approach to its evacuation exercise in a chaotic and unpredictable war zone with no defined front lines. Their caution appeared to be partly justified on Friday when Turkey reported that one of its military aircraft had come under fire as it landed at the airfield on the edge of Khartoum.
Other Americans have made it over the border on their own by road, crossing into Egypt and Ethiopia, joining tens of thousands of Sudanese who have made the same journey.
The United States has helped American citizens get seats on flights out of Khartoum organised by allied nations, and occasionally on convoys going through Khartoum to the airfield.
Quizzed at a news conference on Friday why the U.S. government had not run evacuation transportation in the same manner as other countries, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said it was working closely with partner countries on the efforts. “This is a collective and collaborative effort,” he said.
Mr Patel said several hundred American citizens have left Sudan on their own since the conflict began.
