Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has discussed the safety of US citizens in Sudan in a phone call with Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, as Washington considers the possible evacuation of its embassy amid fighting in Sudan’s capital Khartoum and other parts of the country.
“The two leaders discussed the safety of Americans and the developing situation in Sudan,” Milley’s office said in a statement on Friday.
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also said on Friday that the US military is preparing options to evacuate the US Embassy in Sudan amid the fighting that has killed hundreds, mainly in Khartoum and the west of the country.
“We’ve deployed some forces into theatre to ensure that we provide as many options as possible if we are called on to do something. And we haven’t been called on to do anything yet,” Austin told a news conference at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
“No decision on anything has been made,” he said.
Two US officials said a decision on a possible evacuation of the embassy is expected soon but it was unclear if there will be a public announcement.
Fighting continued in Khartoum on Friday despite Sudan’s army saying it had agreed to a three-day truce with the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to enable people to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The RSF said earlier in the day that it had agreed to a 72-hour ceasefire to mark Eid.
Fighting had eased in some parts of the city on Friday evening, witnesses reported, according to the French news agency AFP.
Khartoum-based journalist and analyst Mohamed Alamin Ahmed told Al Jazeera that there had been a lull in the conflict during Friday night but that it did not amount to a truce.
“We cannot say that here is an implementation of the truce 100 percent because the two sides actually do a lot of movements of repositioning themselves,” he said, adding that sporadic gunfire could still be heard from different parts of the city.
“The situation is fluctuating. We cannot say that this truce is being implemented well but the situation is a little bit, going, a little bit positive.”
Evacuation
With the airport in Khartoum caught in the fighting and the skies unsafe, nations including Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain and the US have been unable to evacuate embassy staff.
A Western diplomat said the evacuation situation in Sudan is one of the most difficult they have seen, with the US likely focused on…