The Dutch in Sudan must take into account that they will have to stay indoors for a longer period of time due to the outbreak of violence. The Dutch embassy in the capital Khartoum advises to be careful with food supplies and not to go out on the streets.
At least 56 people have been killed in Sudan this weekend, including three United Nations employees. As a result, the World Food Program of the United Nations has temporarily suspended all activities in Sudan. About 600 injured people have also been taken to hospital. Dozens of them are in mortal danger.
According to the Dutch embassy in Sudan, it is too dangerous to take to the streets. On Saturday, violence broke out between paramilitaries and the regular army of the African country. This happened after weeks of rising tensions between the army chief and president Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his number two, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Dagalo, better known in Sudan as Hemedti, is the head of the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Burhan and Hemedti argue over the integration of the RSF into the regular army. This merger is an important condition for the transition to civilian government. Now the army is still in power in Sudan.
Dutch people in Sudan are advised by the embassy to stay indoors in a safe place and to absolutely not go out on the street. “Not even to go shopping, for example. The situation is very unsafe and unpredictable,” said the embassy.
Contact with about fifty Dutch people
A spokesman for the embassy says that there is currently contact with about fifty Dutch people in the country.
It mainly concerns Sudanese Dutch people, people with double passports. “They come in and out of the country,” says the Dutch ambassador to Sudan, Irma van Dueren, in the Radio 1 program With an eye to tomorrow.
This makes it difficult to form an active picture of the number of Dutch people in the country. Van Dueren calls on people to register with the embassy “to get the best possible picture of how many there are and to help them”.
If there is a chance that telephone and internet traffic will fail, so that contact can no longer be made, Dutch nationals in Sudan must report this to the embassy.
The travel advice for Sudan was previously tightened to red. The airport at Khartoum is closed and KLM is avoiding the airspace.
