United States embassy staff and their families have been evacuated by US forces from Sudan’s war-torn capital Khartoum, President Joe Biden said, as fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) entered a second week with hundreds killed and thousands injured.
“On my orders, the United States military conducted an operation to extract US Government personnel from Khartoum,” Biden said in a statement.
Hours earlier on Sunday, the RSF announced that it had coordinated with a US military mission consisting of six aircraft which had evacuated the US diplomats and their families from the country.
“The Rapid Support Forces Command has coordinated with the US Forces Mission consisting of 6 aircraft, for evacuating diplomats and their families on Sunday morning,” the RSF said in a tweet.
The RSF also pledged “full cooperation with all diplomatic missions, and providing all necessary means of protection, and ensuring their safe return to their countries”.
In his statement, Biden expressed gratitude for the “unmatched skill” of US forces involved in the operation and noted that Djibouti, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia had helped with the evacuation.
The US embassy staff were airlifted to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia, two US officials familiar with the mission told the Associated Press news agency. The evacuation order was believed to apply to about 70 US nationals.
With the departure of embassy staff, Washington has closed the US mission in Khartoum indefinitely, and the White House has said it has no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of the estimated 16,000 private US citizens registered with the embassy as being in Sudan.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a tweet that the US would “continue to assist Americans in planning for their own safety” in Sudan, and press for a ceasefire to “prevent further damage to the Sudanese nation”.
