A Turkish military transport plane has been shot at at the Wadi Sayidna airport in Sudan, where it had been sent inside the device to evacuate citizens of Turkey in the face of violent fighting in the country that since mid-April has left hundreds dead.
"Our plane landed safely. Although there are no injuries to our personnel, control tasks will be carried out on our aircraft," the Turkish Ministry of Defense said in a statement, in which it noted that the device, a C-130 Hercules , was fired upon with small arms while on his way to Wadi Sidna, an airbase located some 20 kilometers north of the capital, Khartoum.
Previously, the Sudanese Army had accused the powerful Rapid Support Forces (SFR) paramilitary group of firing at the aircraft, injuring one of the crew members and damaging the fuel tank of the aircraft. aircraft. The Turkish Ministry of Defense has indicated that repair work on the device has begun and that the evacuation of citizens trapped in the African country continues.
Many countries have been trying to evacuate their nationals from Sudan since the conflict began. Apart from by air, Turkey has been conducting the evacuation operation via buses from Sudan to Ethiopia. Turkish diplomatic sources have put the number of Turkish citizens who have left Sudan by land at 1,600.
The Turkish government has indicated that its embassy in Khartoum will remain open as long as the evacuation continues. Most Western embassies have closed in the past week, including those in many European countries such as France and Spain.
Sudan entered this Friday the fourteenth consecutive day of clashes between the Army and the SFR, a conflict that has already left more than 500 dead and more than 4,000 injured, according to the UN, although the number of deaths could be much higher since the Humanitarian organizations, which have also left Khartoum, have no way of counting the victims.
Nearly 50,000 people have fled Sudanese territory to neighboring countries after the outbreak two weeks ago of an internal conflict between the Army and paramilitaries, according to figures from the United Nations and other institutions.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) confirmed today at least 20,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad and another 10,000 people who have fled to South Sudan (many of them South Sudanese refugees who have returned to their country).
Added to this are at least 14,000 refugees from Sudan who have arrived in Egypt, according to figures from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another 3,500 fled to Ethiopia, a figure provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said there are also reports of people fleeing Sudanese territory to the neighboring Central African Republic, but the exact figures for that flow are not yet known.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
