Sudan Army Chief Claims U.S. Citizens and Some Other Foreigners Will Be Evacuated

For many, the most immediate challenge is to safely leave the homes where they have been sheltering for the past week. One United Nations official said that a diplomatic vehicle traveling to her home had been stopped by armed men and robbed of all valuables.

When the troops, who were with the Rapid Support Forces, saw a Sudanese civilian running down the street in central Khartoum, they shot and killed him, she said.

Some people have managed to leave, however. General al-Burhan said that diplomats from Saudi Arabia had been evacuated by land to Port Sudan, in the country’s east, and flown to Saudi Arabia, with a similar operation expected to take place for Jordanian citizens. Hungary’s foreign minister said on Saturday that 14 Hungarian citizens and 48 foreign nationals, most of them American and Italian citizens, had been evacuated by sea and were headed to Egypt.

As the clashes continued for an eighth day, Sudan’s health care system was on the verge of collapse, and there were few signs that the two warring factions would stop. Out of 78 major hospitals in the country, only 55 are operational, according to the physicians association.

“The health care system is about to collapse,” Mohamed Eisa, the secretary general of the Sudanese American Physicians Association, a United States-based nonprofit, said in a telephone interview from Khartoum. “We must secure a safe passage for the injured.”

Gunfire had stopped on Friday evening, leaving residents hopeful that a break was in sight. Dr. Eisa said that for the first time, he had been able to get some sleep at his home in southern Khartoum, where the fighting has been continuous.

It did not last long.

He woke up on Saturday morning to the sound of gun fires and heavy machinery. “It was as if nothing had happened,” he said of the dashed hopes for some respite.

Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Paris.