Operation Kaveri: Nearly 3,800 Indians evacuated from crisis-hit Sudan

Jeddah [Saudi Arabia], May 5 (ANI): India has successfully rescued nearly 3800 citizens from war-torn Sudan, as India intensified Operation Kaveri to rescue stranded citizens from Khartoum.

The Indian Air Force C-130J flight with 47 stranded Indians took off from Jeddah in a Delhi-bound plane.

“IAF C-130J aircraft with 47 evacuees from Sudan is on its way to Delhi from Jeddah. Nearly 3800 persons have now been rescued from Sudan under #OperationKaveri,” External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted.

Earlier, on Thursday, 192 Indians, who were stranded in Sudan, landed in Ahmedabad.

They were brought to Gujarat in Indian Air Force C17 aircraft from Port Sudan to Ahmedabad.

On the same day, “20 evacuees departed from N’Djamena in two batches of 2 and 18 onboard flights destined for Chennai and Bengaluru respectively. These evacuees had crossed over from Sudan into Chad through the adjoining land border,” Bagchi tweeted.

A total of 3,584 Indians have been evacuated from the strife-torn Sudan under “Operation Kaveri” which completed nine days of operations on Thursday, according to the Indian embassy in Sudan.

Nine days have passed since the Government of India launched its ambitious rescue mission, “Operation Kaveri” to evacuate stranded Indians in conflict-ridden Sudan. The operation was carried out using 5 Indian Naval Ships and 16 Indian Air Force aircraft including one from Wadi Sayyidna military airbase.

The two warring factions in Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to a seven-day ceasefire, according to a statement of the foreign ministry of South Sudan on Tuesday, reported CNN.

The statement added that the two sides also said that they would send representatives for peace talks “to be held at an agreed venue of their choice.” Neither SAF nor RSF commented on the report on their official channels.

Previous ceasefires haven’t been able to put an end to the violence between the opposing factions across the nation.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese army, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, failed to reach an agreement, and in the middle of April, there were violent skirmishes between the two sides that resulted in at least 528 deaths and large-scale migration of refugees from the country, CNN reported.

Tuesday’s announcement came after the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) warned that more than 800,000 people may migrate to other nations as continuous violence impedes convoys to evacuate people from Sudan’s major ports.