The Georgian Foreign Ministry continues its attempts to provide a safe corridor for the departure of more than 30 Georgian citizens from Sudan, where a military conflict began a few days ago. Negotiations are underway with international partners, but for now people have to stay in a zone under bombardment.
Most of them are employees of Geo Sky and MyWay Airline in the capital Khartoum for work.
A relative of one of them, a Georgian pilot, told JAMnews that she is in touch with him. He says that he is in an apartment in a house located close to the airport and to the site of fighting and bombing. So far everyone who is there with him has food and clean drinking water.
But international media report that the city is running out of food and water. There are power interruptions in Khartoum.The Georgians there have a generator and fuel, enabling them to charge their phones and thus stay in contact.
According to Twitter reports, after talking with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken the warring sides may agree to a 24-hour ceasefire, during which a humanitarian corridor could be established and people evacuated.
“We don’t know whether it will be possible to evacuate the Georgian group through this corridor. Two days ago, only the wounded were brough out through a three-hour humanitarian corridor. As far as I can tell, this was the first night when there was relatively less shooting and we could get some sleep,” the aforementioned source told JAMnews.
An airline says the company has planes in Sudan and they can arrange evacuations on those planes as soon as they are given permission to fly.
The armed conflict in Sudan began on April 16, a result of a struggle for power in the military leadership of the country. In October 2021 a coup took place, the civil authorities were expelled, and a military council installed.
There are armed groups under the leadership of the head of the armed forces and de facto leader of the country, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who opposed to a group led by his deputy and commander of the Rapid Reaction Forces, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti.
The army, led by General Burkhan, carried out airstrikes against the bases of the Rapid Reaction Force in Omdurman, near the capital. Nearly 1,000 people are reported to have been killed.
Bombs have hit Khartoum, damaging key infrastructure. During the shooting at the airport, a UN humanitarian air service plane was damaged. Diplomatic missions in Sudan urge foreign citizens not to leave their homes.
