British nationals trapped in Sudan have until midday on Saturday local time to get on a flight before they stop, ministers have announced, as a doctors’ union called for NHS medics without UK passports to also be airlifted.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said on Friday night more than 1,500 people had been flown out, and there had been a “significant decline in British nationals coming forward”, meaning it was time to end the operation.
The minister said the operation would always be “time-limited”, although an existing ceasefire is not due to run out until the end of Sunday, and there were calls to urgently extend the scope of the operation before it ends.
Earlier, a doctors’ union urged the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, to allow the evacuation of NHS medics who are being prevented from joining the British effort because they do not have UK passports.
The British Medical Association said the UK should take advantage of the extension of the ceasefire to allow the estimated 24 NHS doctors with work visas to leave a country at risk of descending into full-scale civil war between the Sudanese army and its paramilitary rival, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Dr Latifa Patel, the chair of the BMA’s representative body, said she was deeply concerned after reports of NHS doctors in Sudan with UK visas “being turned away from evacuation flights”.
Dr Abdulrahman Babiker, a Sudanese-born registrar at Manchester Royal Infirmary, told Newsnight he was prevented from flying back to the UK after arriving at the Wadi Seidna airbase from where RAF evacuation flights were departing.
The doctor said he had worked in the UK throughout the Covid crisis and felt “totally betrayed” by the ban on holders of work visas, which has continued all week despite repeated lobbying efforts from medical groups and unions.
Doctors and nurses from around the world work in the NHS, including 1,253 from Sudan, according to figures collected by the House of Commons library. Several had travelled to Sudan during Ramadan, which ended just over a week ago.
RAF planes were continuing to fly in and out of the airbase, now guarded by British troops, despite an incident on Friday morning when Turkey said a C-130 transport aircraft was shot at from the ground.
“Light weapons were fired on our C-130 evacuation plane,” Turkey said, although there were no injuries. RSF paramilitaries denied firing at the aircraft, which landed in an area controlled by the rival Sudanese armed forces.
But there were wider concerns about the security situation, amid reports of ceasefire violations in and around the city of Khartoum. Wadi Seidna, a military base with a rough airstrip, is about 15 miles (24km) north of the city.
The Foreign Office has urged Britons to come to the airbase “as quickly as possible” but the government said it would only evacuate UK passport holders, their spouses and children under 18.
RAF planes are estimated to have brought more than 1,500 people from Sudan to Cyprus, according to Cypriot officials. A further 850 men, women and children have flown on to the UK on charter flights provided by the British government.
“Every single British national that has come forward and their eligible dependants has been put safely on to a plane,” Dowden said. But he added: “We are seeing those numbers declining significantly. And just like other countries, as those numbers decline, we have put an end date on this.”
The minister said the UK would maintain a presence in Sudan, particularly at exit points, such as Port Sudan 500 miles north-east of the capital. There is a small presence of British troops there and the frigate HMS Lancaster docked.
A UK-bound charter plane carrying about 250 people evacuated from Sudan on RAF rescue flights left Cyprus at 2pm BST. A second charter carrying evacuees was scheduled to head to Birmingham in the early evening local time.
British officials denied a report in the Times, citing German sources, that the first RAF plane that landed on Tuesday morning had done so unannounced and nearly hit another plane on the runway.
Defence sources said the story and the details cited were not true. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson added: “It is simply untrue to describe this week’s operations as anything other than highly coordinated and cooperative, particularly with our German partners.”
Germany was in charge of the Wadi Seidna airfield at the beginning of the week, while it conducted an evacuation of 700 people, before handing over operational control to Britain. Other countries use the airbase with the UK handling ground control, while the Sudanese army gives permission to use the airspace above.
