A first plane, carrying French and foreign nationals evacuated from Sudan, landed in France on Wednesday morning. Among these evacuees, the staff of the French Embassy, now closed, but also humanitarian workers or even Franco-Sudanese families.
Two hundred and forty-five people, including 195 French, were evacuated from Sudan where for more than a week violent clashes have pitted the regular army against rebel forces. They arrived on the morning of Wednesday April 26 at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport after a night’s flight from Djibouti, and especially after having had days of anguish in the midst of the civil war which is tearing the country apart. .
>> Sudan: “We had to do everything on our own, manage,” says a Sudanese woman who fled Khartoum
These survivors are still a little dazed, a little lost, and apologize for no longer having too much notion of time. They don’t remember, for example, how long they were locked up in their hotel or accommodation, or even when they were evacuated. With the feeling during these last days, to have risked their life every second. “There’s no life there, it’s boom-boom [des tirs] and finished”sums up in his own way Walid, a Franco-Sudanese.
“Everyone hid. There was no water or electricity but you had to go out to find food, and it was risky.”
Walid, Franco-Sudaneseat franceinfo
A feeling of coming back from hell
The embassy staff, a priori a little better protected by their status, also had the feeling of coming back from hell: “The shots are all over the city, but the intensity of the fighting means that there are stray bullets everywheresays Frank. We have broken windows in the buildings. We’ve been through weeks of chaos.”
“It is unlikely that there is no death among us. We have always had a dose of luck. The balance sheet is improbable.”
Franck, employee of the French Embassy in Sudanat franceinfo
All the evacuated survivors agree to warmly thank the soldiers who protected their departure, first with rallying points all over the city, then convoys under escort to reach an airport outside the city.
Situations of “very great stress”
The end of a nightmare, of a very big week of anxiety, in any case, especially for this group of 11 employees of a company in Charente-Maritime, who arrived on April 10 in Khartoum to install irrigation systems . They found themselves trapped in their hotel, also occupied by a group of rebels. “We spent a week in this hotel with on the ground floor, a team of rebels who had three pick-ups with machine guns, a flatbed vehicle with anti-aircraft equipment, says Nicolas, director of the SME. The first days, we were very scared. And then we understood that when there was noise, it was them who were shooting. So a priori, it was not us who were going to receive. Then we tried to get used to it. Some were under very high stress.”
“There were reports of rapes, so there was a lot of concern. We tried to take all the precautions: put the girls on the floors instead so that they are less visible, stay away from the windows… These were somewhat new reflexes.”
Nicolas, director of a company in Charente-Maritimeat franceinfo
Nicolas will not complain since on the plane, he also met Franco-Sudanese families who left in disaster leaving everything behind, without knowing when they could return to their homes and even less what they could find there.