Saudi officers stand ready to welcome evacuees from Sudan with Saudi flags. Saudi commandos were on hand to help children, people with disabilities and seniors with their footing as they carried their luggage onto tugboats.Īn Indian evacuee from Port Sudan disembarks from an Indian warship in Jeddah's main commercial port. Another Saudi officer briskly searched people's bags. Sudanese soldiers patrolled the port, which was well-lit, unlike other parts of the country facing electricity cuts.Ī Saudi officer, seated on a plastic chair on the sidewalk, checked people's passports against a piece of paper bearing a handwritten list of names. Families - women and children - waited patiently in line, exhausted and dragging whatever luggage and personal items they could fit in a suitcase and handbags. We approached Port Sudan around midnight in a tugboat since the warship was too big to dock.Īt the port, it was quiet. To observe the evacuation effort of foreigners from Sudan, I made the round-trip journey, starting in Saudi Arabia, aboard a Saudi naval vessel called the Al-Jubail. May 2, 2023.įrom there, it's a roughly 12-hour journey across the Red Sea to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Makeshift tents and the lights from Port Sudan can be seen from a tugboat as it approaches the city, where thousands of foreigners sought refuge and evacuations. Over the course of two weeks in late April and May, NPR's Dubai-based correspondent Aya Batrawy traveled to four cities where people from Sudan have sought safety and refuge. There was no time to wait for parents, siblings, nephews and nieces to sort their affairs. There was no time to withdraw money from the bank. There was no time to request visas or pick up passports from embassies that abruptly shuttered and airlifted diplomats out. There was no time to obtain passports for newborns or renew expired passports. In total, more than 350,000 people have fled Sudan since the fighting began around six weeks ago. Thousands of others have crossed into Chad, South Sudan and other neighboring African countries. For those holding foreign passports, many headed east to Port Sudan, where naval vessels carried people across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. When fighting broke out on April 15 in Sudan's capital between the country's armed forces and tens of thousands of militia fighters loyal to a rival general, Khartoum's residents had to make a quick and painful choice: Stay or leave?įor those who chose to leave Sudan, most headed north and crossed into Egypt. A man is assisted by Saudi commandos as he gets off a tugboat near Port Sudan and onto a Saudi warship that will travel across the Red Sea to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
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