Khartoum: With the week-long crisis in Sudan showing no signs of a truce, India on Monday launched ‘Operation Kaveri’ to evacuate its nationals from the violence-hit African nation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that the Union government had launched Operation Kaveri to bring back Indians stranded in violence-hit Sudan and that it would be supervised by Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan.
Modi, addressing a massive crowd at the Yuvam Conclave in Kochi, said that a son of Kerala — Muraleedharan — would be overseeing the evacuation operation.
The PM is on a two-day visit to Kerala where he will be attending a host of programmes, including flagging off of the Vande Bharat Express, and a meeting with top priests of the influential Christian community in the state.
Meanwhile, External Affairs minister S Jaishankar said India’s ships and aircraft are set to bring the Indians back home.
“Operation Kaveri gets underway to bring back our citizens stranded in Sudan. About 500 Indians have reached Port Sudan. More on their way,” Jaishankar tweeted.
Diplomats of several Western countries like the US, UK, Sweden and France were evacuated by their governments in the past hours. Though the stakeholders had hoped for a ceasefire to coincide with the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, it did not materialise.
Further, French Diplomatic officials have informed that five Indian nationals have been evacuated from Sudan through a French Air Force flight and were brought to France’s military base in Djibouti along with people of over 28 other nationalities.
“Three flights have brought approx 500 evacuees to France’s military base in Djibouti,” the French Diplomatic officials said.
Over 420 people have been killed and over 3,700 wounded in fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Sudan’s military, headed by Lt Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary group RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, are up in arms due to their disagreements over the proposed transition to civilian rule in the country. Burhan and Dagalo fell out over a recent internationally brokered deal with democracy activists that was meant to incorporate the RSF into the military and eventually lead to civilian rule.
There is a widespread shortage of food, clean water, medicine, fuel, electricity and means of communication, as per the latest OCHA report. It added that the prices of essentials have skyrocketed. The report said that there have been nearly a dozen verified attacks on health facilities. The clashes have also triggered an exodus of civilians to neighbouring nations like Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.