Sudan crisis live: UK nationals urged to reach Khartoum airport now amid uncertainty over ceasefire extension | Sudan

Reuters has a quick snap that the French foreign ministry says it has now evacuated 936 people from Sudan. It says the latest evacuation operation, using the ship Lorraine, was also carrying British and US nationals, as well as French nationals. France again called for an end to the fighting.

UK foreign secretary James Cleverly has told UK nationals in Sudan that he cannot guarantee that the UK will be able to provide them assistance after the ceasefire ends on Thursday night.

He told viewers of Sky News:

We had always planned to evacuate under whatever circumstances on the ground. The ceasefire that we had called for in conjunction with our international allies has made it considerably easier.

We cannot predict exactly what will happen when that ceasefire ends, but what we do know is it will be much, much harder, potentially impossible.

So, what we’re saying to British nationals is if you’re hesitant, if you’re weighing up your options, our strong, strong advice is to go through Wadi Saeedna whilst the ceasefire is up and running.

PA Media reports Cleverly added “There are planes, there is capacity, we will lift you out. I’m not able to make those same assurances once a ceasefire has ended.”

Britain may not be able to continue evacuating its nationals in Sudan when a ceasefire ends – something due to happen later on Thursday – and they should try to reach British flights out of the country immediately, foreign minister James Cleverly said.

“Now is the time to move because when the ceasefire ends, my ability to give the kind of limited assurance I can give now might go and we might not be able to evacuate,” Reuters reports Cleverly told Sky News television in the UK.

Sudan’s army expressed willingness to extend the three-day ceasefire that is due to expire on Thursday night, amid sporadic fighting around the capital, Khartoum, Reuters reports.

The army said late on Wednesday its leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had given initial approval to a plan to extend the truce for another 72 hours and send an army envoy to the South Sudan capital of Juba for talks.

The Sudanese armed forces and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), previously agreed to a three-day ceasefire that is due to expire late on Thursday. There was no immediate response from the RSF to the proposal from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc.

The military said the presidents of South Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti have worked on a proposal that includes extending the truce and talks between the two forces.

“Burhan thanked the IGAD and expressed an initial approval to that,” the army statement said.

Any ceasefire extension could help international evacuation efforts. UK military chiefs said evacuation flights would continue as long as conditions were safe, though the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many further evacuation flights will depart once the ceasefire ends.

Read more here: Sudan conflict – army says it is willing to extend ceasefire amid plans for talks

Blinken and African Union Commission chair hold talks

Helen Sullivan

US secretary of state Antony Blinken and African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat spoke on Wednesday about the crisis in Sudan.

Blinken’s spokesperson, Matthew Miller said the pair had discussed, “collaboration to create a sustainable cessation of hostilities and end the fighting in Sudan” and had agreed that the “AU’s continued leadership remains essential in pressing the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to immediately cease military operations and allow unhindered humanitarian access.”

Welcome and what we know so far …

Helen Sullivan

Welcome back to our live coverage of the crisis in Sudan.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken and African Union commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed working together to create a sustainable end to the fighting in Sudan, the state department said in a statement on Wednesday.

Evacuations from Sudan by sea, land and air are ongoing as the last day of a three-day ceasefire begins.

The UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly is doing domestic media appearances, and we’ll have the latest lines from him.

My colleague Martin Belam will have more on the latest from Sudan shortly. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:

• Six UK flights have evacuated 536 people from war-torn Sudan, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said. UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has said the UK “cannot guarantee” how many further evacuation flights will depart once the 72-hour ceasefire in Sudan expires on Thursday night.

• A sixth RAF transport plane carrying evacuees is about to land in Cyprus, well short of the total number originally expected by this time but indicative of the pick up in pace of the rescue mission. It is not known how many British nationals who are believed to include women and children are on the A400M plane but, as has been the case thus far, they will be processed in Larnaca before embarking on onwards journeys.

• On Wednesday, Nigeria started evacuating around 3,500 of its nationals, mostly students. “The evacuation of our citizens has commenced. Seven buses have left Khartoum and they are heading to Egypt,” Manzo Ezekiel, spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) told AFP.

• A second American has died in Sudan, the White House said on Wednesday, and U.S. authorities are helping a small number of citizens seeking to leave the country during a ceasefire that has curbed fighting. While sporadic violence continues, the ceasefire announced by the United States on Monday appears to be holding, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.

• Omar al-Bashir is in custody in a military hospital amid reports of RSF prison breaks, with Reuters reporting that Sudan’s army said the ousted former president was being held in a military hospital under police custody. It claimed that the formerly jailed Bashir and about 30 others were moved to the hospital on the recommendation of medical staff in Kober prison before fighting broke out in the country.

• The British Red Cross has warned that the “desperate” humanitarian need in Sudan risks becoming “catastrophic”. Sam Turner, head of east and southern African region, said: “We expect the humanitarian need will only grow in the coming days and weeks, including in neighbouring countries as people flee their homes to seek safety.”

• The AFP newswire reports that Ahmed Harun, a leading figure of the regime of deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, has said he has escaped prison. It reports: “Harun, who led the regime’s infamous counter-insurgency campaign in the western Darfur region in the mid-2000s and is wanted for war crimes by the international criminal court, said he had broken out of the capital’s Kober prison.”

• A truce in the 11-day conflict has been undermined by Sudan’s army and paramilitary force. Reuters reports: “Sudan’s army and a paramilitary force battled on the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday, undermining a truce in an 11-day conflict that civilian groups fear could revive the influence of ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his loyalists.”

• Crowds of families have been growing at Sudan’s border crossing with Egypt, desperately trying to escape their country’s violence and sometimes waiting for days with little food or shelter, witnesses said on Wednesday. People have been making exhausting drives across the desert to access points out of the country, including the Arqin crossing into Egypt at the northern border, where families have been spending nights outside in the desert, waiting to be let in.

• Sudanese authorities and the RSF have traded accusations over the release of prison inmates in Sudan. Thousands of convicted criminals, including some sentenced to death, were held in the vast Kober prison in Khartoum, along with senior and lower-ranking officials from the Bashir regime, which was toppled four years ago.

• Cyprus’s foreign ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Guardian that some of the evacuees who had arrived on the first flights had spent Tuesday night in an army training camp in Larnaca. “We have activated our non-combatant national evacuation operation and as part of that all facilities at our disposal are being used,” he said ahead of a fourth RAF flight arriving at the island’s main international airport.