Sudan: First flight evacuating British civilians lands in Cyprus – as PM says next 24 hours ‘absolutely critical’
The first flight carrying British civilians out of Sudan has landed in Cyprus – as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the next 24 hours are “absolutely critical”.
A passenger plane with about 40 civilians on board landed at Larnaca airport, a spokesperson for Cyprus’s foreign ministry said.
Around 4,000 UK passport holders have been stranded in the east African country after heavy fighting broke out.
An RAF plane collected people from an airfield near Khartoum, with priority being given to families with children, the elderly and people with medical conditions.
And two more flights are expected overnight – though Britons will also have to reach the airfield themselves, negotiating checkpoints and potential outbreaks of fighting, as no escorts are being provided.
Evacuation effort begins for stranded Britons – Sudan latest
Africa minister Andrew Mitchell said all British nationals in the country who want to leave should head to the airstrip “before 8pm Khartoum time” – 7pm BST – to be processed for departure, but reiterated they would have to make it there “by their own steam”.
He also appealed to people to continue to register their location with the Foreign Office, and said the government was “continuing to work up other options to assist British nationals wanting to leave Sudan, including other points of exit.”
More than 1,400 military personnel are involved in the UK operation: Pics: MoD
It appears to be a race against time as there are fears over whether a 72-hour ceasefire, which began late on Monday, will hold.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it was “impossible for us to predict how long this opportunity will last”.
Around 1,400 military personnel are believed to be involved in the UK operation.
The first Hercules left Sudan this morning, according to a flight-tracking site, and landed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus this afternoon.
It is understood to have been carrying an advance team, rather than people evacuated from Khartoum.
An RAF Hercules was tracked leaving Sudan and heading towards Cyprus. Pic: Flightradar24
Mr Mitchell said around 200 people were working in a crisis centre in the Foreign Office “day and night”, with a range of government departments “joined at the hip”.
The PM visited staff earlier to thank them for their work, telling them: “Keep at it… the next 24 hours are absolutely critical.
“We can make a big push as we’re already doing and you can help us get everyone who wants to come home, home.”
The government has faced criticism for evacuating diplomatic staff two days before a full evacuation of British nationals began.
But Mr Sunak said he had been chairing emergency meetings on the crisis everyday since Thursday – including one his minister revealed took place at 3.15am on Saturday morning – and he was “pleased that we were actually one of the first countries to safely evacuate our diplomats and their families”.
He added: “It was right that we prioritise them, because they were being specifically targeted.
“Now, the security situation on the ground in Sudan is complicated, it is volatile and we wanted to make sure we could put in place processes that are going to work for people, that are going to be safe and effective and we now have over 100 people on the ground in Sudan.
“The first flight has already left with British nationals, we’ll have more flights this evening, and we’ll have many more into tomorrow and that is down to the hard work of lots of people and we will keep at it.”
Speaking to the Foreign Affairs committee, Mr Mitchell was also questioned as to why other countries – namely France – had already carried out evacuations of their citizens and was asked if the country was doing a better job.
“No I don’t,” he said. “I think everyone is going about this in their own way [and] we have a much larger number of citizens to take out.”
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Sudan ‘fundamentally different’ to Afghanistan – Cleverly
About 4,000 UK passport holders are thought to be trapped in Sudan as rival military factions battle for control.
Hundreds of people have died since the fighting started on 15 April and the evacuation comes after days of pressure for a plan to get Britons out.
Food and fuel have soared in price, electricity and internet are cut off in much of the country and the clashes have left governments scrambling to get their citizens and diplomats out.
Mr Cleverly said contact had been made with leaders of the two factions “calling on them to allow British nationals, dual nationals and minors to be evacuated”.
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Briton escapes Sudan on French flight
Sky’s Alistair Bunkall – in Cyprus – saw the first flight take off from RAF Akrotiri and said many more are likely to follow considering the number of people who need evacuating.
It takes about three and a half hours to travel from the Mediterranean base to Sudan.
The Foreign Office said it is also looking at other potential “points of exit” – possibly by sea via Port Sudan, according to Bunkall.
Two ships, RFA Cardigan Bay and HMS Lancaster, are being lined up in case they are needed, said the Foreign Office.
The airborne evacuations carry obvious risks for the RAF, such as potential exposure to gunfire or even missiles, according to Sky’s defence editor Deborah Haynes.
Although they shouldn’t be targeted, she said there is “always the possibility of a mistake, a miscalculation or a deliberate attack given the chaos and unpredictably on the ground”.
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Streets of Khartoum devastated by fighting
Read more:
Which countries have evacuated their citizens from Sudan?
What’s happening in Sudan?
Some UK citizens have manged to escape on evacuation flights operated by other countries.
Germany, Italy, Spain and France are among those that have already rescued hundreds of people from dozens of countries on their own flights.
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An elderly woman could be seen being helped off the military plane.
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However, the Foreign Office said only British passport holders would be able to get a place on the UK planes.
Britain’s diplomats and their families were evacuated over the weekend in a precarious mission by elite troops that took place under the cover of darkness.
Some senior Foreign Office officials will be at the airstrip to coordinate the evacuations.
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Ben Wallace has told MPs that 120 British forces had arrived at an airfield in Sudan to help with the evacuation of British nationals, but warned the situation continued to remain ‘volatile’.
The violence in Sudan comes after rival generals fell out over a deal to incorporate the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group into the military.
The army and RSF mounted a coup together in 2021 after long-time ruler Omar al Bashir was overthrown in a popular uprising two years earlier.
However, their relationship broke down during negotiations to integrate and form a civilian government.
As a possible ceasefire takes shape, Palestinians face the prospect of rebuilding their shattered enclave.
At least 67,194 people have been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, the majority of them (53%) women, children and elderly people.
The war has left 4,900 people with permanent disabilities, including amputations, and has orphaned 58,556 children.
Altogether, one in ten Palestinians has been killed or injured since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
The attack killed 1,195 people, including 725 civilians, according to Israeli officials. The IDF says that a further 466 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the subsequent conflict in Gaza.
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Israel says a ceasefire is expected to begin within 24 hours after its government ratifies the ceasefire deal tonight.
Swathes of Gaza have been reduced to rubble
More than 90% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, many of them multiple times, following Israeli evacuation orders that now cover 85% of the Gaza Strip.
Few of them will have homes to return to, with aid groups estimating that 92% of homes have been destroyed.
“Despite our happiness, we cannot help but think of what is to come,” says Mohammad Al-Farra, in Khan Younis. “The areas we are going back to, or intending to return to, are uninhabitable.”
The destruction of Gaza is visible from space. The satellite images below show the city of Rafah, which has been almost totally razed over the past two years.
In just the first ten days of the war, 4% of buildings in Gaza were damaged or destroyed.
By May 2024 – seven months later – more than 50% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed. At the start of this month, it rose to 60% of buildings.
A joint report from the UN, EU and World Bank estimated that it would take years of rebuilding and more than $53 billion to repair the damage from the first year of war alone.
A surge in aid
Central to the promise of the ceasefire deal is that Israel will allow a surge of humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
The widespread destruction of homes has left 1.5 million Palestinians in need of emergency shelter items.
Many of these people are living in crowded tent camps along Gaza’s coast. That includes Al Mawasi, a sandy strip of coastline and agricultural land that Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone”.
Aid agencies report that families are being charged rent of up to 600 shekels (£138) for tent space, and over $2,000 (£1,500) for tents.
Israel has forbidden the entry of construction equipment since the war began and has periodically blocked the import of tents and tent poles.
Restrictions on the entry of food aid have created a famine in Gaza City, and mass hunger throughout the rest of the territory.
Data from Israeli border officials shows that the amount of food entering Gaza has frequently been below the “bare minimum” that the UN’s famine-review agency says is necessary to meet basic needs.
As a result, the number of deaths from malnutrition has skyrocketed in recent months.
To date, Gaza’s health ministry says, 461 people have died from malnutrition, including 157 children.
“Will Netanyahu abide this time?”
As talks of a ceasefire progressed, the Israeli assault on Gaza City continued.
Footage shared on Tuesday, the two-year anniversary of the war, showed smoke rising over the city following an airstrike.
A video posted on Wednesday, verified by Sky News, showed an Israeli tank destroying a building in the city’s northern suburbs.
Uncertainty still remains over the future of Gaza, with neither Israel nor Hamas agreeing in full to the peace plan presented by US president Donald Trump. So far, only the first stage has been agreed.
A previous ceasefire, agreed in January, collapsed after Israel refused to progress to the agreement’s second stage. With that in mind, many in Gaza are cautious about their hopes for the future.
“Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time?,” asks Aya, a 31-year old displaced Palestinian in Deir al Balah.
“He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now.”
Additional reporting by Sam Doak, OSINT producer.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
When the peace deal came, it came quickly.
Rumours had been spreading over the course of the day, anticipation grew. A source told me that a deal would be done by Friday, another said perhaps by Thursday evening.
Israel and Hamas agree to peace deal – live updates
They were both wrong. Instead, it came much sooner, announced by Donald Trump on his own social media channel. Without being anywhere near the talks in Egypt, the president was the dominant figure.
Few will argue that he deserves the credit for driving this agreement. We can probably see the origins of all this in Israel’s decision to try to kill the Hamas leadership in Doha.
The attack failed, and the White House was annoyed.
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‘Hostages coming back,’ Trump tells families
Arab states started to express themselves to Trump more successfully, arguing that it was time for him to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu and bring an end to the war.
They repeated the call at a meeting during the UN General Assembly, which seems to have landed. When the president later met Netanyahu, the 20-point plan was born, which led to this fresh peace agreement.
Donald Trump holds a note saying a deal is ‘very close’. Pic: Reuters
Does it cover everything? Absolutely not. We don’t know who will run Gaza in the future, for a start, which is a pretty yawning hole when you consider that Gaza’s fresh start is imminent.
We don’t know what will happen to Hamas, or to its weapons, or really how Israel will withdraw from the Strip.
But these talks have always been fuelled by optimism, and by the sense that if you could stop the fighting and get the hostages home, then everything else might just fall into place.
Reaction to the peace deal in Tel Aviv from Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held hostage. Pic: Reuters
In order to agree to this, Hamas must surely have been given strong assurances that, even at some level, its demands for Palestinian self-determination would bear fruit. Otherwise, why would the group have given up their one trump card – the 48 hostages?
Once they have gone, Hamas has no leverage at all. It has precious few friends among the countries sitting around the negotiating table, and it is a massively depleted fighting force.
So to give up that power, I can only assume that Khalil al-Hayya, the de facto Hamas leader, got a cast-iron guarantee of… something.
Arab states will greet this agreement with joy. Some of that is to do with empathy for the Palestinians in Gaza, where 67,000 people have been killed and more than 10% of the population has become a casualty of war.
An Israeli soldier stands next to the parcels of humanitarian aid awaiting to be transferred into Gaza in July. File pic: Reuters
But they will also welcome a path to stability, where there is less fear of spillover from the Gaza conflict and more confidence about the region’s economic and political unity.
Trump’s worldview – that everything comes down to business and deal-making – is welcomed by some of these leaders as a smart way of seeing diplomacy.
Jared Kushner has plenty of friends among these nations, and his input was important.
Read more about 7 October:
‘It is trauma’: Two lives torn apart
‘Instead of getting married, they got buried together’
For many Israelis, this comes down to a few crucial things. Firstly, the hostages are coming home. It is hard to overstate just how embedded that cause is to Israeli society.
The return of all 48, living and dead, will be a truly profound moment for this nation.
Secondly, their soldiers will no longer be fighting a war that, even within the higher echelons of the military, is believed to be drifting and purposeless.
Thirdly, there is growing empathy for the plight of the Gazans, which is tied to a fourth point – a realisation that Israel’s reputation on the world stage has been desperately tarnished.
Some will object to this deal and say that it is too weak; that it lets Hamas off the hook and fails to punish them for the atrocities of 7 October.
It is an accusation that will be levelled by far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government. It could even collapse the administration.
But for most people, in Israel, Gaza, across the Middle East and around the world, it is a moment of relief. Last week, I was in Gaza, and the destruction was absolutely devastating to witness.
Whatever the compromises, the idea that the war has stopped is, for the moment at least, a beacon of optimism.
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