U.S. Positioning Troops for Evacuation of American Embassy in SudanFierce fighting has trapped people in the capital, Khartoum, and the United States says it is “conducting prudent planning” to get diplomatic staff members out.Helene Cooper, Elian Peltier and Farnaz Fassihi | April 20, 2023 | Updated 5:36 p.m. ETRAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The Pentagon is moving more troops to the African nation of Djibouti to prepare for a possible evacuation of U.S. Embassy staff in Sudan, where fierce fighting between two warring generals has led to the swift deterioration of conditions in the capital according to two officials.
Senior U.S. officials acknowledged that it would not be easy to get embassy staff out, let alone the estimated 19,000 American citizens who are believed to be in the country. The international airport in the capital, Khartoum, has been the target of heavy shelling, leaving destroyed planes littering the tarmac. Sudan’s air space is also closed.
Vedant Patel, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said on Thursday that because of the fighting at the Khartoum airport, “it is currently not safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of U.S. citizens.”
The United States has a base in Djibouti, and it is preparing to deploy more troops there. The American move comes as fighting in Sudan intensified on Thursday, with a bombardment by warplanes in the center of Khartoum amounting to one of the most fearsome assaults yet in the days-long series of clashes.
It remained unclear on Thursday who, if anyone, was in control of Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country. . .
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/world/africa/sudan-us-evacuation-marines.html
