The U.S. suspended its diplomatic mission in war-torn Sudan following the evacuation Saturday of embassy personnel in Khartoum.
About 100 special operations personnel were involved in the mission. The Pentagon confirmed they left Djibouti at about 9 a.m. in several aircraft, including MH-47 Chinook helicopters. They refueled in Ethiopia and then headed to Khartoum, about three hours away.
“The operation was fast and clean, with service members spending less than an hour on the ground in Khartoum,” said Army Lt. Gen. D.A. Sims II, director of operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. “The evacuation was conducted in one movement, via rotary wing [aircraft].”
About 100 embassy personnel, including Marine Corps security guards, were brought to safety.
“Every military operation has some inherent risk to it. Anytime you’re flying at 100 knots very close to the ground in pitch-black, there’s certainly some risk there,” Lt. Gen. Sims said. But, “we did not take any small-arms fire on the way in and were able to get in and out without issue.”
The decision to suspend embassy operations and pull American diplomats out of Khartoum came after a week of heavy fighting between rival factions vying for power in Sudan.
Battles between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have killed hundreds and wounded thousands.
“Closing out an embassy is never our first choice, it’s never our second choice. It’s the last thing we ever want to do,” said Ambassador John Bass, the undersecretary of state for management. “We continually go through a progression of assessing whether or not we can maintain operations.”
A number of U.S. officials in Sudan were pinned down in the crossfire during the first couple of days of fighting. The State Department began to consolidate them into a smaller number of locations that could offer comparatively more protection, officials said.
Their situation became untenable after it became clear that the fighting in Sudan would continue even after vital supplies like food, power and access to fuel ran out.
“We reluctantly concluded that the only really feasible option for us, in this case, was to temporarily suspend operations [and] move those operations — our diplomacy — offshore and continue to work from there,” Ambassador Bass said.
U.S. officials don’t have a timeline for when embassy operations will resume in Sudan but said they hope it happens as soon as possible.
Citing the escalating threats in Sudan, the British also safely evacuated its embassy personnel in Khartoum in a military operation involving about 1,200 troops from the 16th Air Assault Brigade, the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force.
“I want to pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of our armed forces,” British Defense Minister Ben Wallace tweeted Sunday.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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