CRACK Commandos arrived in Sudan yesterday to oversee the evacuation of 2,000 Britons while a shaky ceasefire held in the strife-torn nation.
The elite UK troops flew in from Cyprus to protect an airfield north of tinderbox capital Khartoum after warring factions agreed to stop fighting for three days.
Yet gunfire continued as the 120-strong force led by Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade, SAS troops and RAF military police arrived to secure an air bridge.
The first UK military flights left Wadi Seidna Airfield at around 4pm UK time, priority going to families with kids, the elderly and people with medical conditions.
Around 40 Brits landed at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus just before 7pm.
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A second flight landed in Larnaca in the early hours of Wednesday.
The Foreign Office has yet to confirm how many people made it on to the second plane.
PM Rishi Sunak said “many more flights” would follow over the next 24 hours after the Foreign Office contacted more than 1,000 UK citizens who sought help.
The rescues, co-ordinated by 1,400 UK military personnel, began two days after an SAS mission rescued 30 British Embassy staff in Khartoum amid intense fighting.
Mr Sunak defended the decision to save the diplomats first, arguing that they had been “targeted”.
He said: “I’m pleased we were actually one of the first countries to safely evacuate our diplomats and our families. And it was right that we prioritised them because they were being targeted.
“The security situation on the ground in Sudan is complicated, it is volatile and we wanted to make sure we could put in place processes that are . . . going to be safe and effective.”
Brits were asked to make their own way to Wadi Seidna, 18 miles from Khartoum, as military planners feared bloody clashes if UK forces were sent into the streets to extract those stranded.
German and French forces had secured the site before the British troops arrived, with equipment, on a C-130 Hercules early yesterday.
It was followed by A400M Airbuses which will ferry Brits out.
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Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “We’ll maintain this airhead as long as we can but the situation remains dangerous and volatile.
“This is an active conflict, the ceasefire has been announced, but we know there have been pockets of violence even within previous ceasefires.”
An alternative escape route was being scoped from Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast in case the ceasefire collapses or the airfield is swamped with desperate refugees.
That, however, would leave Brits having to cover 500 miles of hostile desert areas from Khartoum.
HMS Lancaster and RFA Cardigan Bay were heading to Port Sudan to assist if a land evacuation becomes necessary.
Officials are also understood to be looking at other options to get people out of the country while the calm lasts, including land convoys.
Sudan’s army and Rapid Support Force rebels agreed to the ceasefire which comes amid a bloody power struggle and bombardment of Khartoum which has left at least 420 dead and 3,500 injured.
Around 2,000 British nationals — among 4,000 UK passport holders and dual citizens — are believed to have registered with the Foreign Office pleading to leave.
Among them was a British food company senior executive who was robbed at gunpoint by soldiers from the Rapid Support Force as he fled the capital.
Sam Bodley-Scott, head of strategy for DAL Food, was ambushed as he walked with other expats to an evacuation point to take buses ferrying workers out of Sudan.
The 60-year-old had earlier seen a neighbour killed by a stray bullet to the head which smashed through a window.
He had been surviving by boiling tap water and eating stockpiled porridge but decided to take his chances after two tanks were blown up outside his compound.
Wife Amanda, from Berkshire, said of the robbery: “They were spread-eagled and searched. Every bit of money was taken and their phones, but not passports. They were not shot by some miracle.”
She added: “Whenever we spoke, you could hear the constant sound of gunfire in the background.”
She praised the “stellar job” by the SAS in saving diplomatic staff, but said the Foreign Office were “disinterested” in looking after other people who wanted out.
Other stranded Brits blasted the officials and Giles Lever, Britain’s ambassador to Sudan, who was on leave when the crisis erupted.
He calculated, wrongly, that Muslim factions would not clash during the month of Ramadan.
His blunder echoes the error of former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who refused to cut short his sunbed break in Greece in 2021 as Afghanistan imploded.
One British woman in Sudan on holiday with family said they fled 815 miles in two days to Egypt after giving up on a UK rescue.
The woman, named as Dina, said they arrived exhausted in the city of Aswan after a bus trip.
She said: “We were desperately calling the British Embassy asking if there were any evacuation plans. They told us there weren’t any.
“The situation around us was deteriorating and we wanted to get out while we could. We travelled though really active areas where you could see big explosions going off. It was really nerve-racking."
