Sudan Conflict: 262 back from ‘city of horror’

Mohammad Shahadat, 29, was earning a decent living from his laundry in the Sudanese capital Khartoum until an armed conflict beginning on April 15 plunged the Northeast African country into a civil war.

The Bangladeshi man was earning between 2,00,000 and 2,50,000 Sudanese pounds, equivalent to about Tk 36,000 to Tk 45,000, a month. He was able to remit money to his family in Brahmanbaria regularly.

"Now I don't even know whether my shop is still unharmed," Shahadat said, adding that the assets he left behind in Khartoum could be worth about Tk 2.5 lakh.

Shahadat fled Khartoum empty-handed on May 2 along with other Bangladeshis under an evacuation effort of the Bangladesh mission there.

He reached home yesterday as a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight carrying 239 evacuees reached Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the morning.

Another Biman flight carried 23 more Bangladeshis who fled Sudan, the national flag carrier said in a press release.

The two batches of evacuees were first taken to a safe zone in Port Sudan on the Red Sea and then airlifted to Saudi Arabia before being flown to Dhaka by Biman.

Shahadat, who had been in Sudan since 2018, said he was stranded at his residence without food for the first five days of Ramadan soon after the conflict broke out.

"I only could go outside and buy some food after a temporary ceasefire was called," he added.

Till yesterday, over 570 Bangladeshis who were stranded in Sudan due to the ongoing conflict have been evacuated, International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in a release.

The UN migration agency has been providing support to the Bangladesh government in the repatriation effort.

"Our foremost concern is the protection and welfare of these individuals," Abdusattor Esoev, chief of mission at IOM Bangladesh, said in the release.

According to government officials, about 700 out of 1,500 Bangladeshis living in Sudan initially expressed willingness to return home in the wake of the civil war.

All of them were evacuated from Khartoum to Port Sudan in phases since May 2, officials said.

The first batch of 136 stranded Bangladeshis was repatriated on a Biman flight from Saudi Arabia on May 8.

Rear Admiral (Retd) Khurshed Alam, maritime affairs secretary of the foreign ministry, said no Bangladeshi willing to return home was in Port Sudan as of yesterday.

However, about 100 new Bangladeshis expressed willingness to return home from Sudan. They were in different areas of Khartoum and yet to reach Port Sudan, he told reporters at the airport.

And 137 Bangladeshis from Sudan were in Jeddah of Saudi Arabia and waiting for repatriation. They will be brought back home by the next available flight, he added.

Mohammad Arman, 36, of Narayanganj, an evacuee who reached home yesterday, said theft and mugging alongside continuous gunfire and bombing have turned Khartoum into a "city of horror".

"I had to flee in a single set of clothes, unable to carry anything," Arman said, sharing his experience with this newspaper at the Dhaka airport.

He had been in Khartoum for about five and a half years, recently working as a supervisor at a ceramic factory.

The Egyptian owner of the factory also fled Khartoum without paying employees their dues, he said, adding, he reached Port Sudan on May 10 and was taken to Saudi Arabia a day later.

Akbar Hossain, another evacuee who was a machine operator at a carton factory in Khartoum, said he had been in Sudan for the past eight years.

Stranded for about two weeks in the conflict, he joined other Bangladeshis working with him in the factory to arrange a vehicle and reached Port Sudan.

"In Khartoum, we were running out of food," Akbar said, adding that at one stage he even started to fear that he might not be able to return home alive.

Senior Secretary of Expatriates' Welfare Ministry Ahmed Munirus Saleheen said they can facilitate the returnees in distress with various support services, such as loans for reintegration with the Probashi Kalyan Bank and training, in case of anyone want to migrate abroad again.