Crowds of those seeking rescue swell at Sudan’s main seaport

Exhausted Sudanese and foreigners joined growing crowds at Sudan’s main seaport on May 2, waiting to be evacuated from the chaos-stricken nation after more than two weeks of fighting increasingly turned the capital of Khartoum into a ghost town.

Others packed buses and trucks heading to Sudan’s northern border with Egypt, AP reports.

Since fighting erupted April 15, fierce clashes have taken place in residential areas of Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman, just across the Nile. The sounds of gunfire and explosions were heard again Tuesday.

“Much of the capital has become empty,” said Abdalla al-Fatih, a Khartoum resident. He said everyone in his street has left.

The battle for control of Sudan erupted after months of escalating tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Al-Fatih’s family managed to get out of Khartoum over the weekend after they spent the past two weeks trapped in their home in Khartoum’s neighborhood of Kafouri, a major flashpoint.

They arrived in Port Sudan on the Red Sea late Monday, after an exhausting 20-hour trip, he said. There, they found thousands, including many women and children, camping outside the port area. Many had been there for more than a week, with no food and other services, he said.

Port Sudan has become a hub for foreign governments to evacuate their citizens by air and sea.

Tariq Abdel-Hameed was one of around 2,000 Syrians in Port Sudan waiting to be evacuated by ferries that transport foreigners to Saudi Arabia’s coastal city of Jeddah or airlifted out of Sudan

Some stayed in an open area at the port, while others camped in mosques or hostels in the city, he said. Some 200 Syrians have been evacuated since the crisis began, including 35 on Friday on a Jeddah-bound vessel, he added. A first Damascus-bound flight carrying dozens of patients and elderly people is scheduled to take off later on May 2, Abdel-Hameed said.

At the congested crossing points with Egypt, thousands of families have waited for days inside buses or sought temporary shelter in the border city of Wadi Halfa to finalize their paperwork to be allowed into Egypt.

Yusuf Abdel-Rahman, a Sudanese university student, said he crossed into Egypt along with his family, through the Ashkit crossing point late Monday. They spent their night at a hostel in Egypt’s southern city of Aswan, and plan to board a train to Cairo later on May 2, he said.

Abdel-Rahman’s family went first to another crossing point, Arqin, over the weekend, but it was so crowded that they couldn’t reach the customs area.

“It’s a chaotic situation (in Arqin),” he said over the phone. “Women, children and patients are stranded in the desert with no food, no water.”

Describing the situation in Khartoum, Abdel-Rahman said there had been widespread destruction and looting particularly in upscale neighborhoods in the capital. He said a neighbor told him by phone that armed men in RSF uniform stormed their home in Khartoum’s Amarat neighborhood on Friday, a day after they fled the capital. Many Sudanese have taken to social media to complain that their homes were stormed and looted by armed men.

He said the family felt lucky it left before the home was stormed. “We could be ended up dead bodies,” he said.

The fighting has displaced at least 334,000 people inside Sudan, and sent tens of thousands more to neighboring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia, according to UN agencies.

“Now we’re seeing some extremely fast-moving situations along the borders,” Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, told a news briefing Tuesday in Geneva.

He said that between 900 and 1,000 people arrive daily at the border with Ethiopia where “there’s a desperate lack of wash services, food, shelter, water, medical assistance.”

At least 20,000 people crossed into Chad, which borders the Darfur city of Genena where clashes last week killed dozens and wounded hundreds.

Aleksandra Roulet-Cimpric, the Chad Country Director with the International Rescue Committee, described dire conditions for the arrivals, mainly women and children, many of whom have taken shelter under trees in an “extremely hot” weather.

“This leaves them particularly at risk of exploitation and abuse,” she warned.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that the number of people fleeing to neighboring countries could surpass 800,000. “We hope it doesn’t come to that, but if violence doesn’t stop we will see more people forced to flee Sudan seeking safety,” he wrote on Twitter Monday.

Early Tuesday, the sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed though many parts of the capital, with fierce clashes taking place around the military’s headquarters, the international airport and the Republican Palace in Khartoum, residents reported. Warplanes were seen flying overhead, they said.

The fighting continued even though both sides declared Sunday that they would commit to a three-day extension of a humanitarian cease-fire to allow safe corridors for healthcare workers and aid agencies working in the capital.

“The war never stopped,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate. “Doctors can’t move safely. Hospitals were still occupied.”

Morgues across the capital are filled with bodies and people are still unable to collect the dead for burial, he said. Many injured don’t have access to hospitals, he added.

At least 447 civilians have been killed and more than 2,255 injured since the fighting began, according to figures on Monday by the Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. As of a week ago, the Sudanese Health Ministry had counted at least 530 people killed, including civilians and combatants, with another 4,500 wounded, but those figures haven’t been updated since.

The truce extension was a result of increasing international pressure on rival generals to stop fighting and engage in negotiation amid worsening humanitarian disaster. Both sides agreed to send representatives for talks potentially in Saudi Arabia, which joined the United States in pressing for cease-fire, according the UN envoy in Sudan, Volker Perthes.

The power struggle has derailed Sudan’s efforts to restore its democratic transition, which was derailed in Oct. 2021 when then allied generals, Burhan and Dagalo, removed a western backed transitional government in a coup.