Canada announced on Sunday that it was temporarily suspending its diplomatic operations in Sudan, indicating that its personnel would work from a “safe location outside the country”, as the deadly battles between the army and paramilitaries have raged for more than one week.
“The situation in Sudan has rapidly deteriorated, making it impossible to ensure the safety of our personnel in Khartoum,” Ottawa said in a statement.
“Our diplomats are safe and working from outside the country,” said Foreign Minister Mélanie Jolie on Twitter without giving further details.
Locally recruited staff, meanwhile, remain in the Sudanese capital, the authorities added, stressing that they were examining “all possible options to support them in view of the rapidly changing situation”.
The Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also clarified that limited consular services continued to be offered to its citizens on site.
This announcement from Ottawa comes as the United States, France and other countries announced on Sunday the evacuation of their nationals or diplomatic personnel.
According to testimonies collected by AFP, gunfire and explosions again shook the capital, Khartoum, and its suburbs on Sunday, overflown by fighter planes.
Pope Francis called for “dialogue” in the face of the “serious” situation in the country, where, since April 15, the two generals in power since their 2021 putsch have embarked on a merciless war.
The violence, mainly in Khartoum and Darfur (west), has claimed more than 420 dead and 3,700 injured, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
They have displaced tens of thousands of people to other states in Sudan, or to Chad and Egypt, while several countries are mobilizing to evacuate their nationals.
Burned stores
US President Joe Biden had earlier announced that the military had “conducted an operation to extract US government personnel from Khartoum”.
A “just under a hundred” people including several foreign diplomats were evacuated during a helicopter operation, said a senior State Department official, John Bass. But not the other American nationals, who would be several hundred in Sudan, whose evacuation is not planned “for the moment”.
Italy also indicated that it would try to evacuate its nationals on Sunday, as did Turkey and other countries.
According to video images collected by AFP, dozens of UN vehicles left the capital on Sunday, as did many buses, which were heading for Port-Sudan, in the east of the country. It was not immediately possible to know who was on board.
For researcher Hamid Khalafallah, “demanding secure corridors to evacuate foreign nationals without at the same time demanding an end to the war would be terrible”.
“The international actors will have less influence when they leave the country: do what you can to leave safely but do not leave the Sudanese behind without protection”, pleads this specialist in Sudan.
In Khartoum, the five million inhabitants fear a resurgence of violence after the departure of foreigners, in their city deprived of running water and electricity, with often faulty telephone and Internet networks.
Army air raids and paramilitary cannon fire have already destroyed or forced the closure of “72% of hospitals” in combat zones, according to the doctors’ union.
In the streets, lampposts are lying on the ground, burnt shops are still smoking. Here, a bank was gutted. There, despite everything, a mechanic tries to keep his shop open in case one of the very few passers-by needs his services.
The conflict erupted on April 15 between the army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, Sudan’s de facto ruler, and his deputy-turned-rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who commands the much-feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). ).
Regional risk
The two generals took power in the 2021 coup, halting the process towards a democratic transition that followed the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
But they were unable to agree on the integration of the FSR into the regular troops, after months of political negotiations under international auspices.
On Friday, the army and the FSR had announced, separately, a three-day ceasefire for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. The two opponents, however, immediately accused each other of violating the truce.
While the two sides are also engaged in an information war, it is impossible to know who controls the country’s airports and what state they are in after being the scene of heavy fighting since the first day of the conflict.
This week, Eid al-Fitr has had a bitter taste for the people of Khartoum. We usually celebrate this holiday “with pastries and gifts for the children”, but this year, it is “gunshots and the smell of death”, confides one of them Sami al-Nour.
Living conditions are probably worse in Darfur, the scene of a terrible conflict in the 2000s, where no one can go immediately. On the spot, a doctor from Médecins sans frontières (MSF) evokes a “catastrophic situation”.
In Sudan, Africa’s third-largest gold producer and yet one of the world’s poorest countries, health services have been on their knees for decades and a third of the 45 million people suffer from hunger.
The cessation of operations by most humanitarian organizations will aggravate the situation. And the conflict now threatens to gain ground beyond Sudan’s borders, experts say.