Canada tells its citizens in Sudan to continue to shelter in place as air evacuation not possible at this time

Toronto [Canada], April 23 : Canada has told its citizens stranded in Sudan, amid the fighting between rival forces, that evacuations are "not possible at this time" owing to the closure of airspace, reported CNN.

The Canadian government, in a tweet on Saturday, urged its citizens to "continue to shelter in place" and assured them it was "coordinating with other countries to respond to the crisis."

The tweet came prior to an announcement made by US President Joe Biden that US government personnel and their family members had been evacuated in an operation that involved special forces troops, as per a CNN report.

Saudi Arabia announced earlier on Saturday that it has evacuated Canadian citizens from Sudan to Saudi Arabia. The number of Canadians that the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs assisted in evacuating was not disclosed, though.

There are 1,596 Canadians registered with the Registration of Canadians Abroad Service in Sudan, however since registration is voluntary, this statistic merely gives an estimate of the number of Canadians there.

The number of registrants for any given area is often not a true representation of the number of Canadians who actually live in or go to that area because registration is voluntary. Canadian nationals can register on the Travel.gc.ca website by using the Registration of Canadians Abroad feature, according to CNN.

On April 15, fierce fighting broke out in the northeastern country between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Fears of a humtarian catastrophe have been sparked by the violence that has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries.

In Khartoum, where hospitals are overflowing with victims due to the violence's rising intensity, many Sudanese people have been desperately trying to evacuate, CNN reported.

But leaving Sudan right now is a difficult endeavour. It is expected that bus tickets out of the crisis zone will cost at least five times as much as they did previously.

Saudi authorities claimed that in addition to evacuating its own population, they had also evacuated residents of 11 other nations, including those from Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Burkina Faso, CNN reported.

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