Last night, a sixth Ministry of Defense evacuation flight from Sudan landed in Aqaba, Jordan. That same evening, the first plane with the evacuees landed at Eindhoven Air Base with 104 people on board, including forty Dutch people. A Dutch displaced person sustained a gunshot wound. The same evening two buses with 43 Dutch arrived at the air base from Berlin.
No serious negotiations
Foreign governments are evacuating their citizens en masse from the violence-torn African country as the warring sides agreed to a shaky 72-hour ceasefire. Despite this, United Nations envoy to Sudan Volker Perthes sees no signs that the warring factions in Sudan are willing to seriously negotiate an end to the fighting. Perthes told the New York Security Council yesterday that both sides believe they can win a victory.
Bio time bomb
Meanwhile, UN officials and World Health Organization staff say one of the warring factions has seized control of a national health laboratory in the capital Khartoum that contains biological material. According to them, this is an “extremely dangerous” development, not least because the fighters have expelled all laboratory technicians and technical personnel from the building.
Cholera, polio and measles
The WHO representative in Sudan, Nima Saeed Abid, speaks of an extremely dangerous situation «because we have polio isolates in the laboratory. We have measles isolates in the lab. We have cholera isolates in the lab.” “There is a huge biohazard associated with the occupation of the central public health laboratory in Khartoum by one of the warring factions.” With technicians sent home and power outages in Khartoum, “It is not possible to properly handle biological material stored in the laboratory for medical purposes,” WHO said.