Foreign citizens seeking to escape embattled Sudan will have some extra time after warring generals extended by three days a fragile cease-fire before it expired Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the deal late Monday.
The most recent truce, after previous ones were mostly ignored, helped facilitate the evacuation of thousands of people from the capital city of Khartoum.
The U.S. has deployed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to Sudan to aid people traveling by land from Khartoum to the Port of Sudan, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Monday.
American citizens began arriving at Port of Sudan via this land route and the U.S. is helping “facilitate their onward travel,” Sullivan said at a briefing.
The U.S. also is dispatching Navy assets to the Red Sea near Port of Sudan to provide support.
U.S. officials decided over the weekend to remove American diplomats from danger when it appeared no cease-fire was in the offing, Sullivan said.
He said it became clear “there was a decent likelihood that we would see some form of protracted conflict, even if punctuated by moments of cease-fire. So we couldn’t just wait for the end of this all.”
John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told CBS that Americans who remain in Khartoum should shelter in place. “This is not the time to be moving around the city,” Kirby said.
He said the “vast majority” of Americans remaining in Sudan are citizens of both nations who live and work there. Others work for partner organizations such as USAID or teach at the American school.
European nations scramble to evacuate citizens from Sudan
Following this weekend’s dramatic evacuation of U.S. diplomats from Khartoum, European nations and other countries raced Monday to extract their citizens during a lull in fighting between the army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces.
The eruption of violence has killed more than 420 people and wounded over 3,400 in nine days.
As of Monday, France rescued nearly 400 people on flights to the nation of Djibouti. Germany had three flights out of Sudan, bringing more than 300 people to Jordan, Reuters reported.
The Dutch air force flew out of Sudan to Jordan in the early hours Monday carrying people of various nationalities on board.
Italy, Spain, Jordan and Greece also flew out several hundred more people, a mix of their own citizens and people from other nations. Other nations, including Russia and Japan, were seeking to get citizens to safety as a growing number of evacuees poured into Sudan’s neighboring nations, including South Sudan.
Without aid or food, Sudanese ‘will suffer greatly’
As rescue operations waged by the United States and European nations brought diplomats and others to safety, the Sudanese braced for more intense fighting.
The fighting in Khartoum and other cities left Sudanese residents trapped in their homes by dangerous conditions. Explosions, gunbattles and armed looters made it dangerous for residents to venture out for food or medicine.
Amani el-Taweel, an Egyptian expert on Africa, told The Associated Press that conditions are poised to worsen. Once diplomats and others are evacuated, the “warring parties will not heed any calls for a truce or a cease-fire,” she said.
The poor who can’t afford to make it out “will suffer greatly as they will have no access to aid or food.”
SEAL Team 6, Army Special Forces aided clandestine evacuation
U.S. officials have released few details on this weekend’s evacuation. Elements of SEAL Team 6 – which rose to fame for killing Osama Bin Laden 12 years ago – and the Army’s 3rd Special Forces Group took part in the evacuation, a security official told The Washington Post.
The Americans were airlifted out on three MH-47 Chinook helicopters that flew first from Djibouti and then refueled in Ethiopia, the Post reported.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin says the aircraft “went in at night, low-level. … They were on the ground for a little more than half an hour. No shots were fired.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
