Early on Wednesday morning, a C-130J of the Indian Air Force carrying 135 Indians from Port Sudan touched down in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Under Operation Kaveri, this was the third such batch to be culled from the war-torn Sudan. According to a tweet from MoS in the Ministry of External Affairs, V Muraleedharan, the Indian government will shortly aid the journey of these Indian people back to their home country. Another IAF aircraft carrying 148 Indian citizens made a landing in Jeddah earlier this morning. Operation Kaveri is being operated by the Indian government to evacuate stranded citizens from Sudan, which has seen intense bloodshed as a result of confrontations between the government’s forces and the rebel RAF.
Third batch of 135 Indians from Port Sudan arrived in Jeddah by IAF C-130J aircraft, tweeted V Muraleedharan. All those who arrived in Jeddah will soon begin their flights to India.
The minister tweeted that the first IAF C-130J aircraft from Port Sudan carrying 148 Indians under #OperationKaveri had arrived in Jeddah. I’m glad to see the Indians smiling.
Tuesday saw the start of Operation Kaveri’s evacuation of the first group of Indians trapped in Sudan. Aboard INS Sumedha, which set sail for Jeddah with 278 passengers, was Port Sudan. On Monday, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said that Operation Kaveri had been started to rescue its residents who were trapped in war-torn Sudan. The administration, according to Jaishankar, “is committed to helping all our brethren in Sudan.” The administration claimed that it was concentrating on the protection of the more than 3,000 Indian citizens who are currently residing in Sudan.
More than 250 people were killed and almost 2,600 others were injured in Khartoum and other towns as a result of the violence in Sudan, which broke out as a result of a power struggle between the two main factions of the military government of the nation. The primary paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and the regular army are both involved in the fight. The likelihood of a nationwide civil war starting has increased as a result of this predicament.
Since the 2021 coup, Sudan has been governed by a council of generals. The current conflict is between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who serves as the country’s de facto president and head of the armed forces, and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who is in charge of the RSF paramilitary group. The two generals hold opposing opinions about the country’s future course, particularly with regard to the suggested transition to civilian rule.
