(Ottawa) Canada wants to take advantage of the window of opportunity that has opened in Sudan with a ceasefire to evacuate its nationals from the country in crisis. Evacuations will be made by air, and two military vessels are in Sudanese coastal waters.
This is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when he arrived at parliament for his cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning. After him, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly stopped at the microphone of the journalists to provide more details.
“We will proceed with the civilian evacuation. We want to take advantage of the opportunity that the ceasefire allows us. Therefore, we are working with the Canadian Armed Forces on that issue,” she said.
The Minister indicated that the number of Canadians evacuated from Sudan had increased to around 100, in particular thanks to the assistance of France. Registrations in the register of Canadians who are in Sudan jumped from 1,439 the day before to 1,700 on Tuesday morning, the minister said.
“They have all been contacted. If you have family in Sudan, please tell them to go to the Global Affairs website and register, because we will join them,” she insisted. , adding that a crisis unit of 80 people is working on the evacuation plan.
Minister Joly negotiated with neighboring countries such as Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia to facilitate the passage of Canadians. “I would like to thank Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, who have helped us to evacuate approximately 100 Canadians from Sudan so far,” she said.
But in the longer term, it will take a diplomatic solution to the conflict that has put the country on fire and blood. “We must find a permanent resolution to this conflict,” argued Mélanie Joly. Hostilities between the two armed forces have claimed hundreds of lives since hostilities began on April 15.
According to Agence France-Presse, the 72-hour ceasefire concluded in Sudan between the belligerents was respected in Khartoum on Tuesday, even if there were shootings in the capital. The paramilitaries of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, and the army of rival General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, have pointed the finger at each other.
