The window to evacuate Canadians from Sudan by airplane is closing, and a senior Canadian Armed Forces commander says contingency plans for land and sea evacuations are being drawn up.
The comments came just one day after Canada began military airlifts from an airport outside the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, which has now seen 13 days of intermittent and at times heavy fighting between two rival military factions.
“We have stressed that the window for air evacuation out of the current airport is closing,” said Vice-Adm. Bob Auchterlonie, the commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, in a briefing Friday.
“We’re working closely with our allies … and we’re looking at those options to maintain the viability of that airfield as long as we can. That being said, that will be closing in the very near term, so we’re continuing to get as many flights in and out as we can while the window remains open.”
Canada managed two military airlifts on Thursday out of the Wadi Seidna airport outside of Khartoum, but two planned flights were cancelled on Friday. Global News first reported one flight was cancelled due to a mechanical issue – Auchterlonie told reporters it was an issue with the aircraft’s ramp, which has since been resolved.
The second flight was preparing to take off, Auchterlonie said, when gunfire hit a Turkish airplane at the airport. The airport has since reopened, and a Canadian aircraft was en route as Canadian officials briefed the media Friday afternoon.
On Friday evening, two Canadian evacuation flights departed from Sudan with an unknown number of people onboard, Defence Minister Anita Anand said on Twitter. Global Affairs Canada also confirmed the Friday departures.
Auchterlonie said the Canadian Armed Forces, which are assisting Global Affairs Canada in the evacuation efforts, is working with counterparts from the United States looking at the more perilous options of evacuating people by land, or transporting them to Port Sudan – a more than 800-kilometre journey – as fighting continues across the country.
Two Canadian navy ships, HMCS Montreal and MV Asterix, are also in the region.
Africa’s third largest country has seen 13 days of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and a paramilitary organization known as the Rapid Support Forces, led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Since the outbreak of hostilities, Global Affairs Canada has fielded roughly 2,000 inquiries about assistance. As of Friday afternoon, the department was directly assisting just under 400 people, and approximately 300 Canadians had been evacuated by air – either on allied aircraft or by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Global News reported Wednesday that Canadian officials were warned weeks ago that Sudan was descending into conflict, and the Canadian Armed Forces had both military assets and contingency plans drawn up for a possible evacuation.
Global News spoke to multiple sources who had direct knowledge of the evacuation planning, but were not authorized to speak on the record.
The federal government has come under criticism for delays in evacuating Canadians and diplomatic staff from the country, relying on allies to shuttle Canadians to safety. Global’s sources pointed to two “failures” to execute speedy evacuations, including not making timely decision to pre-position military assets and a failure to secure landing strips that would’ve allowed Canadian planes to get on the ground faster.
One senior sources faulted a “slow decision-making process that needlessly endangered embassy staff.”
Asked when the intelligence indicated the fighting would intensify in Sudan, Auchterlonie said “it’s not a perfect science.”
“We’re tracking hot spots throughout the globe, with our partners at Global Affairs, with our other government department partners as well,” Auchterlonie said, referencing ongoing fighting in Ukraine and tensions in the South China Sea.
“We do watch indicators, (but) indicators in the morning don’t necessarily give you the full picture. In terms of non-combatant evacuation operations, I think I planned six last year, and we executed a few.”
—With additional files from Sean Boynton
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