The situation of fighting lives on in the capital Khartoum all the time, which makes it difficult to carry out evacuations, Haavisto says.
Anna Näveri,
Varpu Kiviranta,
STT
The first Finns have been evacuated from Sudan to neighboring countries, says the foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (green).
Haavisto does not say their number in more detail, nor which country or which party they were taken out of Sudan with.
– The aim is to protect evacuation connections so that they are not subject to military harassment or attacks, Haavisto explains.
Finland has relied on liaison work in the evacuation, as several countries are currently trying to evacuate their own citizens from Sudan.
– We have had very intensive cooperation with the Nordic countries, Sweden and Norway, with the United States and with France, which has a strong presence in Khartoum. Thanks to this cooperation, solutions for evacuation have also been obtained, Haavisto opens.
According to Haavisto, Finland has also cooperated with UN organizations.
At least Britain, Germany, France and the United States managed to fly their citizens out of Sudan on Sunday.
According to AFP, France flew at least a hundred citizens of different countries from Khartoum to Djibouti in East Africa. Haavisto does not take a position on whether the first evacuated Finns were in this group.
A dozen or so Finns, among them children
On Sunday, before the first evacuation, there were a dozen Finns, including children, in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
As for the Finns still in Khartoum, there is no exact information on the evacuation schedule yet, as the security situation lives on all the time.
Haavisto says that some of the Finns in Khartoum are people who have been employed by international organizations. Some are employees of private companies and some are for other reasons, such as people in Sudan due to family ties.
According to Haavisto, organizations have tried to provide priority evacuation routes for people who were employed by international organizations.
The whereabouts of all Finns is known and they were contacted by phone on Sunday.
– The biggest bottleneck is that some Finns are in areas in the capital Khartoum, where there are still gun battles and a very dangerous situation on the streets, when people may not be able to get to gathering places or out of the city.
The evacuations have been affected by the fact that the fighting situation has constantly changed on the streets of the capital and there has been no ceasefire.
– During an hour it looked optimistic and then we had to change plans when the security situation worsened, Haavisto describes.
The RSF forces have been fighting for the second week against the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. According to the UN, more than 420 people have died in the conflict and thousands have been wounded.