The U.S. military on Saturday evacuated embassy staff and their families from Sudan amid escalating conflict in the country.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that operations at the U.S. embassy in the city of Khartoum would be paused and that U.S. personnel had been cleared from the area.
“Suspending operations at one of our embassies is always a difficult decision, but the safety of our personnel is my first responsibility,” Blinken said. “The widespread fighting has caused significant numbers of civilian deaths and injuries and damage to essential infrastructure and posed an unacceptable risk to our Embassy personnel.”
President Biden noted that he issued the orders to remove the personnel and that his team was notifying him on a continual basis of the safety efforts for Americans in the war-torn nation. He urged “an immediate and unconditional ceasefire” between the battling Sudanese army and paramilitary group wreaking havoc.
The “tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians. It’s unconscionable and it must stop,” he said.
The State Department shared Friday that at least one American had been killed in Sudan since the fighting broke out, NBC News reported. The identity of the individual was not known.
The situation marks the third time in three years that the U.S. military has moved out the staff of an American embassy as violence overtakes a foreign capital. In 2021, the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan suspended activity amid the turmoil due to the Taliban’s takeover. In 2022, U.S. embassy staff in Kyiv, Ukraine relocated to Lviv in western Ukraine before transferring to Poland. (The embassy reopened in its Kyiv location in 2022.)
Last week, the Pentagon started deploying more troops to the African nation of Djibouti in anticipation of a potential evacuation of embassy employees in Sudan, according to the New York Times. An estimated 19,000 American citizens were believed to be in the country, the publication noted.