A first group of Dutch people was evacuated from Sudan. Minister Wopke Hoekstra (Foreign Affairs) announced it on Sunday. The group is bound for Jordan in a French plane. According to the French, there are around 100 people on board the plane, including a “handful” of Dutch people, Hoekstra said.
The minister hopes that later tonight more Dutch people can go to Jordan and that the two Dutch planes that are now in Jordan can also be deployed. The group aboard the French plane departed from an airport outside the capital Khartoum. They had to go to the airport on their own. It wasn’t without danger, says Hoekstra.
“But all in all, that risk plus the risk of landing and taking off again is acceptable to us versus the likely higher risk of staying in the city and in your home,” Hoekstra said. She estimates that some people are still trying to get to the airport. “We are in close contact with this group.”
‘Very complex operation’
Hoekstra speaks of a ‘very complex operation’ that the Netherlands are carrying out together with the French and the Germans and also with other countries. “We agreed that we will bring each other’s compatriots.” This could take days, Hoekstra suspects.
A number of other Dutchmen join a UN convoy. I’m on my way to Port Sudan, a city in Eastern Sudan. “This is separate from this incipient airlift.”
Heavy fighting broke out between the government army and militias in the capital Khartoum in Sudan in mid-April. There is also fighting in various places outside the area. Earlier, the ministry announced that more than 150 Dutch people in Sudan had turned up for evacuation. Participation in the evacuation is voluntary, Hoekstra previously wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives.
Source: BNR
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