Four families from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with 32 members requested urgent evacuation from Sudan, where the war has been going on since April last year, it was confirmed by the Embassy of BiH in Egypt.
“These people fled under great threat, and now they are in Port Sudan. Not all of them have the necessary documents. We must first complete the visas for their entry into Egypt or Qatar in order to transport them to BiH,” Sabit Subasic, Ambassador of BiH in Egypt, said yesterday.
“The situation there is really uncertain. Our citizens are currently safe in Port Sudan, but internal conflicts are still ongoing there. The paramilitaries, the militias, are advancing. They have ruled the capital Khartoum and are heading east. I was told that they have one obstacle, one city and then they will come to Port Sudan,” Subasic stated.
Port Sudan is a city on the coast of the Red Sea in southeastern Sudan, where there is also an airport.
One of the ways of evacuation, adds Subasic, is through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with whom, he says, he is in constant contact.
“People from the IOM talked to our people in Sudan. They are looking for the most convenient way to evacuate our citizens,” he pointed out.
Subasic confirmed that they have so far managed to evacuate several citizens of BiH and their family members from Sudan. He says that one family from BiH managed to get from Sudan to Egypt by crossing the desert in extremely difficult circumstances.
“There is a young guy who married a Sudanese woman and stayed to live there. They have two children. His mother is in BiH and keeps calling me to see how we can help him,” said Subasic.
The conflict in Sudan erupted in mid-April 2023 after months of tension between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his rival General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), erupted into open combat.
Sudan has been governed jointly through the Council of Generals since the country’s long-time authoritarian president Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a coup in 2019.
In the last year, hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan have fled or been displaced, and it is estimated that thousands of people have died in the conflicts, while there is no accurate data.
Due to the war, almost half of the 49 million people in Sudan need help, while more than 7.5 million people have left their homes, making Sudan the largest refugee crisis in the world, and hunger is on the rise, N1 writes.
E.Dz.
