“This enables us to act flexibly and quickly, if necessary. Evacuation is not currently possible due to the security situation,” Minister Wopke Hoekstra (Foreign Affairs) said in a letter to the House of Representatives. We are preparing for all kinds of scenarios.
The number of Dutchmen in Sudan who were contacted by the ministry rose to about eighty. Previously there were fifty. The Foreign Office assumes that there are more Dutch people in Sudan. The Express Consular Support Team will also head to Jordan.
Since Saturday, fierce fighting has been taking place between the Sudanese government army and paramilitary forces. Fighting is particularly fierce in the capital, Khartoum. A cease-fire had already been agreed twice, but in both cases it was immediately violated. It is unclear if the airport can still be used.
Hoekstra says the Netherlands is working with other countries as much as possible in light of this crisis. This mainly concerns Germany, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. People from the Ministry of Defense travel to Djibouti in East Africa for international coordination.
The defense aircraft departed from Eindhoven Air Base on Wednesday evening. We are talking about the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and the A330 aircraft of the NATO grouping stationed there. And then a second C-130 Hercules moved to Jordan.
Earlier in the day, the weekly magazine “Der Spiegel” reported that German forces had halted an attempt to evacuate civilians from Sudan. It happened because fighting broke out near the airport. The government in Berlin has not confirmed this.
