Sudanese fleeing the fighting between rival generals in their capital flooded an already overwhelmed city on the Red Sea and Sudan’s northern borders with Egypt as explosions and gunfire echoed Tuesday in Khartoum.
Many exhausted Sudanese and foreigners arrived in Port Sudan, the country’s main seaport, joining thousands who have waited for days to be evacuated out of the chaos-stricken nation. Others have been driven in packed buses and trucks, seeking shelter in Egypt, Sudan’s northern neighbour.
The fighting, now in its third week, has turned Khartoum and its neighbouring city of Omdurman into battlefields.
Fierce clashes are taking place inside residential neighbourhoods that have become “ghost areas”, residents say. The conflict, which capped months of worsening tensions, pits the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, against a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Port Sudan has become a hub for foreign governments to evacuate their citizens by air and sea.
At the congested crossing points with Egypt, thousands of families have waited for days inside buses or sought temporary shelter in the border city of Wadi Halfa to finalise their paperwork to be allowed into Egypt.
The fighting has displaced at least 334,000 people inside Sudan and sent tens of thousands more to neighbouring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Ethiopia, according to UN agencies. Many Sudanese have taken to social media to complain that their homes were stormed and looted by armed men.