On Sunday, US special forces successfully carried out an evacuation of the American embassy in Khartoum, Sudan amidst ongoing battles between two rival Sudanese commanders.
The evacuation operation involved roughly 100 US troops in three helicopters who airlifted all remaining American embassy employees to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia. The operation took less than an hour, with no shots fired and no major casualties reported.
The US mission in Khartoum has been indefinitely shut down, leaving thousands of private American citizens still in Sudan. US officials have deemed it too dangerous to carry out a broader evacuation mission. President Joe Biden thanked the troops and pledged efforts to assist remaining Americans in Sudan, calling for an end to the violence.
The operation received support from Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Saudi Arabia. The ongoing power struggle between Sudan’s armed forces chief and the head of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has resulted in over 400 deaths, with foreign diplomats and aid workers among those killed or injured. Photo by Christopher Michel from San Francisco, USA, Wikimedia commons.