Britain criticised for prioritising embassy staff as Germany and France celebrate evacuating hundreds of citizens
By the time Britain’s first civilian evacuation flight had taken off from a rough airfield north of Khartoum on Tuesday afternoon, other European nations were highlighting their successes in evacuating hundreds of their citizens fromBritain’s military may have been the first to use the Wadi Seidna base on Sunday afternoon, with permission of Sudan’s embattled government, to evacuate two dozen diplomatic staff, but the UK then passed on control of the airport to Germany.
The first five flights had evacuated 490 people from 30 countries, highlighted as a “huge achievement” by the country’s foreign secretary Annalena Baerbock. Criticism in Britain had mounted on Monday following the rescue of 24 embassy staff in a risky operation that involved elite forces, probably from the SAS, picking them up in Khartoum and taking them to Wadi Seidna since no evacuation had been offered to the 2,000-plus other stranded Britons.That changed shortly before 7am on Tuesday when James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, announced the UK was “coordinating an evacuation”.
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