LONDON (Reuters) -Britain has so far flown more than 530 people out of Sudan on six flights, the Foreign Office said on Wednesday, as the first rescued Britons landed at London’s Stansted airport.
Britain began evacuating its citizens on Tuesday, following other governments in pulling people out of the North African country where clashes between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have killed hundreds and stranded foreigners.
Britons are being airlifted by Britain’s Royal Air Force to Cyprus, before being flown on to London.
Britain’s Foreign Office said on Twitter that 536 people had been evacuated as of 2000 GMT. Earlier Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government hoped to complete eight evacuation flights by the end of Wednesday.
“We intend to keep running the evacuation flights,” Sunak’s spokesman told reporters. “It is a fast moving situation and it is something kept under close review bearing in mind there is a time-limited ceasefire.”
Wahied Hassan, 68, from Coventry in central England, and his 66-year-old wife Fatima, who were visiting family in Khartoum, were among the first to arrive back in Britain.
Hassan told Reuters he received a call from the British embassy on Tuesday morning, asking him to reach the airfield in 30 minutes and bring only small belongings.
“On our way to the airfield, we saw so much trouble, a lot of checkpoints … militia threatening people, scaring people, abusing people verbally and physically,” he told Reuters.
“It’s very scary to be honest. Very scary. I’m so lucky.”
The government has come under criticism for not offering Britons an escort to the airfield. Hassan said he had “begged” a friend to give him a lift.
Brigadier Dan Reeve, the head of the British military operation in Sudan, was quoted by the BBC as saying it would not be safe to bring people together in one location in Khartoum as there had been instances of convoys being attacked.
“This is not a race to get it wrong,” he said, adding that around 500 British nationals a day could be evacuated.
The government has estimated around 4,000 Britons were in Sudan.
Sunak’s spokesman said the evacuation flights had been full or close to full. While the majority were British nationals, the spokesman did not give a breakdown and said other nationalities might have been offered seats on a flight-by-flight basis.
(Reporting by Muvija M, Alistair Smout, Andrew MacAskill, Sachin Ravikumar and Toby Melville in London, and Michele Kambas in Larnaca, writing by Kylie MacLellan, editing by Sarah Young, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Grant McCool)
