China helps evacuate 215 Pakistanis from Sudan

Abdullah Jan

Islamabad: Chinese military has so far evacuated at least 215 Pakistanis from Sudan to help Pakistan in the evacuation process.

Foreign Office (FO) said that nearly all 1,000 Pakistanis would be evacuated from war-torn Sudan within the next 24 to 48 hours.

The FO maintained that 93 more Pakistanis stranded in Sudan had reached the country in the fourth batch of evacuees. It said that the latest batch arrived at Islamabad airport on Monday via flight no PK754.

According to the FO, a total of 636 stranded Pakistanis had returned home as they landed in Karachi via Jeddah separately on five special PAF flights to date.

With the latest batch of evacuees, as many as 729 Pakistanis have been repatriated to the country so far. The FO has been working to repatriate Pakistanis stranded in the war zone ever since the conflict began earlier this month.

The Pakistanis in Sudan are first evacuated to Port Sudan and then transferred to Jeddah where the PAF is bringing them back home.

Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry’s Asia affairs chief Liu Linsong told the Pakistani ambassador in Beijing Moinul Haque that China tried its best to evacuate the nationals of “friendly countries” alongside its own from Sudan.

The Chinese ministry said earlier that nationals of five countries had left Sudan on Chinese naval ships. It also said that more countries were seeking help from China to help evacuate their citizens.

The People’s Liberation Army’s Weishanhu supply ship brought 493 people from Port Sudan to the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah on Saturday morning. Among them were 215 Pakistani citizens and a Brazilian family of six, apart from 272 Chinese nationals.

It was the second and final round of large-scale evacuations from Sudan by the PLA naval force, with 940 Chinese in all brought to Jeddah on board the Weishanhu, escorted by the guided-missile destroyer Nanning, between Wednesday and Saturday, the Chinese defence ministry said.