US teacher trapped in Sudan with 18-month-old daughter as country spirals into civil war
A mum and baby are among the thousands of people trapped inside a city devolving into absolute chaos amid a fiery conflict between generals.
A teacher from Massachusetts and her 18-month-old daughter are among thousands of Americans trapped in Sudan amid accusations the US government has “abandoned” its citizens as embassy staff were evacuated.
Trillian Clifford, a teacher at the Khartoum International American School, has been sheltering in place with her daughter Alma in their apartment since fighting broke out earlier this month.
Nearly 100 US Embassy officials were evacuated over the weekend, but the White House says it has no plans to evacuate the estimated 16,000 US citizens still stuck in the country.
One American has already been killed in the conflict, and Ms Clifford’s family in the US are calling on the government to take action.
“She has been sheltering in place in an apartment waiting for help,” her sister-in-law Rebecca Winter said in a TikTok video last week.
“All humanitarian aid in Sudan has stopped. The fighting has intensified. The air strikes have gotten worse and closer to her apartment … all she hears outside are machine guns firing. Because it is so hard to get food and water right now my sister-in-law is reverse-weaning her daughter so at least she can stay hydrated.”
Ms Winter urged her followers to “get loud about this”.
Ms Clifford told local radio station WBUR on Sunday that she and her daughter were now sheltering in place in another apartment lower to the ground after air strikes occurred less than one kilometre from her home.
She said they were in a “relatively safe location, although I would have to add, as a caveat, that it feels like nowhere in the city is particularly safe”.
“We are hearing a lot of gunshots and explosions,” Ms Clifford said in an emailed voice memo to the radio station. “There’s definitely aircraft flying over continuously throughout the day.”
She said she was “taking the orders from the Embassy — and from our employers as well — very seriously to stay low to the ground, stay as far away from windows as possible and to stay hidden, because this is a very, very dangerous situation to be involved in”.
On Friday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said US citizens must “make their own arrangements to stay safe in the difficult circumstances”.
“Americans should have no expectation of a US government-co-ordinated evacuation at this time,” he said. “And we expect that that’s going to remain the case.”
The US Embassy also issued an alert on Saturday warning that “due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a US government-co-ordinated evacuation of private US citizens”.
Writing on Twitter, one user said a friend who taught at the Khartoum International American School was “among the American citizens who apparently have been abandoned by the State Department that evacuated the embassy there tonight”.
“Some of these citizens were literally sheltering in the same buildings as embassy staff,” they wrote. “For any American citizens reading this, please share and then contact your Senators to demand that the citizens trapped in Sudan also be evacuated ASAP.”
Shocking image as city descends into chaos
It comes as chilling satellite images cast a grim light on the deadly turmoil that is bringing a nation of 45 million to its knees, as Sudan slid further into the abyss this week.
As civilians scramble to leave, the images show planes, helicopters and almost entire airports have been destroyed in the fighting.
They show at least four damaged helicopters at a helicopter base south of Khartoum — a city of almost six million people in the heart of the north African nation.
At Merowe Airbase, north of Khartoum, entire buildings were set on fire. Su-25 ground attack aeroplanes can be seen destroyed at El Obeid air base as well. At least 14 planes at Khartoum International Airport have been destroyed in recent days, according to satellite imagery analysis from Maxar Technologies.
Everyday folk there are facing the terrifying possibility of another bloody civil war, as battles between the army and paramilitaries rage in the capital city of Khartoum.
Witnesses have reported bodies in the streets, and more than 330 civilians have been killed as of Friday, with no end in sight to the bloodshed. Thousands of residents have already fled from the capital, seeking safety from the ongoing violence.
“Life in Khartoum is impossible if this war does not stop,” said 33-year-old Alawya al-Tayeb via AFP as she escaped the city.
“I tried to make children not see the slain bodies on the streets,” she said.
The Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries said they would “fully commit to a complete ceasefire” from 4pm local time for 24 hours, as did the army.
But gunfire still continued into Wednesday night, according to witnesses on the ground. It was the second day in a row a proposed humanitarian ceasefire failed to take hold.
The Sudanese army said that 177 Egyptian soldiers who had been captured by the RSF in the northern city of Merowe were evacuated on Wednesday back to Egypt on four Egyptian military transport planes.
Other evacuation plans have been difficult to orchestrate, as foreign diplomats have been attacked and UN received reports of sexual violence against aid workers.
The violence erupted last Saturday between forces of the two generals who seized power in a 2021 coup. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who commands the RSF are now in a brutal clash for supreme power.
It has followed a bitter dispute between them over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.
Battles have damaged residential and commercial buildings, and civilians sheltering in their homes are becoming increasingly desperate, with dwindling food supplies, power outages, and a lack of running water.
Hospitals are being shelled, and the official doctors’ union has reported “severe shortages” in remaining facilities.
“The toll has been high, with initial estimated civilian deaths of more than 270,” according to the embassies. The real figure is thought to be much more, with many wounded unable to reach hospitals which are themselves being shelled.
The US embassy in Khartoum said it started gathering citizens’ personal details but tweeted: “Due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, there are no plans for (a) US government-co-ordinated evacuation.”
The defence minister in Chad, which borders Sudan’s Darfur region, said around 320 Sudanese soldiers had fled over the border in fear of the RSF, which was created in 2013 by longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
Military commanders toppled Bashir together in April 2019 following mass protests against his three decades of iron-fisted rule. In October 2021 Burhan and Daglo worked together in the coup against the civilian government installed following Bashir’s ouster, derailing an internationally backed transition.
According to analysts, the two clashing. generals were for years legitimised by an international community more focused on appeasement than on accountability.
New #satellite imagery (April 18, 2023) reveals more evidence of the ongoing fighting between rival military factions in #Sudan. At #Merowe Airbase (~330 km north of #Khartoum) you can see damaged and destroyed fighter aircraft and one of the airbase buildings on fire. pic.twitter.com/T9MdaQmTRk
— Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) April 18, 2023
“The international community has a lot to answer for here,” Sudanese analyst Kholood Khair told AFP, as deadly fighting raged in the country for nearly a week.
“It was their poorly thought out political process which really ratcheted up tensions,” said Khair, founder of the Confluence Advisory think tank.
Since the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, international mediators have sought to bring civilians and the military to the negotiating table.
But in the process, analysts believe, they gave too much credit to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo — commonly called Hemeti — who leads the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“There was a lot of hand-holding and appeasement of these generals throughout this political process, because the international community framed them as reformers,” Khair said.
Previously, negotiators and envoys spoke almost exclusively with the generals, “rarely engaging substantial proportions of the Sudanese public in the political process”, allowing the generals to ignore “accountability to the Sudanese people”.
It was this that “led the generals to believe that they could have an all-out conflict in the middle of Sudan’s capital”.
— with AFP
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