People disembark from a British plane that evacuated them from strife-torn Sudan at a Cyprus airport, April 26, 2023.
Khartoum – From strife-torn Sudan Several hundred Britons managed to get to Sudan. Most of them made the perilous journey through numerous military checkpoints and amid ongoing armed clashes. They made it all the way to Wadi Sidna Air Base, located north of Khartoum, hoping to board a rescue flight from Sudan to Cyprus. It was a nightmare, many described to the British newspaper The Guardian.
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Women and young children, including babies in prams, were among those who landed at Stansted Airport in Britain on Wednesday afternoon. A man who arrived on the first flight described his desperation as he tried to leave Khartoum. He called the Sudanese capital a “city of ghosts”.
“It's fantastic to be back. It was a nightmare. We've never seen anything like this before,” said the man, who did not give his name. “I found myself in the middle of the conflict. There was bombing, shelling. They even shelled the house next to us. It was like a James Bond movie,” he added.
“We are very grateful to the British servicemen and women who risked their lives , to arrive in Sudan and help us get out. There are more people stuck there. We were very lucky, but not everyone was as lucky as us,” added one of the evacuees.
The British-Sudanese father-of-three, who lived in Toxteth, near Liverpool, for 16 years, described being spotted by members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) on his way to the air base. “They searched us four times, but when they saw that I had children, they let us go,” Munzir Salman said. gunfights. “It was terrible. I'm a single father of three, so I had to stay calm for them. I told them it was like a game,” he added.
As The Guardian wrote, some then made the dangerous journey to the base and were subsequently told that the rescue flight was not for them. For example, Babiker Mohamed, a British citizen now living in Stoke-on-Trent, said his wife Gayda and two sons, aged ten and six, traveled five hours to Wadi Sidna. But they did not get on the evacuation flight, reportedly because Mohammed was not with them.
Although his family have valid visas to enter Britain, they were told they must have British passport holders with them in order to they were able to take a rescue flight.
According to London-based doctor Nadiy Baasher, 75 of her NHS colleagues remained trapped in Sudan. She also described that there is confusion about who is entitled to get on the rescue flight. But many people went to the airbase, even with the risk of not getting on the plane.
Britain began a large-scale evacuation of its citizens on Tuesday, following other countries in rescuing their citizens from Sudan, where violent clashes between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have claimed more than 400 lives since mid-April.
