Reality Check

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick was asked in Parliament what safe and legal routes to the UK would be available for a young person wanting to flee the current conflict in Sudan and come to the UK.

He replied that “the best advice clearly would be for individuals to present to the UNHCR… we already operate safe and legal routes with them.” UNHCR is the UN's refugee agency.

But the SNP’s Alison Thewliss pointed out that the UNHCR had issued a statement, external saying that "there is no mechanism through which refugees can approach UNHCR with the intention of seeking asylum in the UK”.

Mr Jenrick rejected the statement.

The UNHCR explained that it identifies refugees who are “particularly at risk” and resettles them, but that “new resettlement opportunities to the UK are minimal”.

According to UK asylum statistics, external, last year 218 people from Sudan came to the UK as part of this resettlement scheme.

Elderly people dependent on children who are British citizens should be allowed to come to the UK aboard evacuation flights from Sudan, the Conservative MP who chairs the foreign affairs select committee has said.

Speaking to the BBC, Alicia Kearns, said: "In the same way we treat children who are dependent on their parents, we should respect that some elderly people are dependent on their children.

"So, I think it is important that we are bringing people out who would otherwise be left destitute and really vulnerable."

The Foreign Office has said, external that evacuation flights are currently open only to British passport holders.

We've been reporting on the dilemma faced by people forced to leave elderly relatives behind in order to get their families out of Sudan.

Kearns also said that "of course" the government should look at providing "safe and legal routes" to allow people from Sudan to claim asylum in the UK.

Speaking today, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the government was focused on helping British nationals leave Sudan and that there were no plans to set up routes by which refugees could come to the UK.

One person to have made the journey from Sudan back to the UK was 15-year-old Mazen, who was met at Stansted Airport by his father.

Take a look at what he told the BBC a little earlier:

Charley Adams
Live reporter at Stansted Airport

I’m still at Stansted Airport where the first flight from Sudan, via Cyprus, landed a few hours ago.

“We see smiles of relief when people see the sign,” said charity volunteer Clive Emmett.

The chief officer of Uttlesford Community Action Network (UCAN) said his team of volunteers had been working with the Red Cross to welcome and support the evacuees.

“Today has been good,” he told me. “The people seemed very calm – they were very polite and friendly.”

Clive said they had offered people advice on travel, temporary accommodation and SIM cards so they could use their phones.

“We make sure people feel safe and reassured,” he said.

UCAN has been running a Ukrainian hub since May and the volunteers are trained in helping people who have experienced trauma.

He said the volunteers were "amazing", having only been asked to run the welcome desk on Tuesday afternoon, and they're now staying this evening to help evacuees on the next flight.

Image source, Getty Images

At the heart of the battle for Sudan are these two men: Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Initially the pair worked together. They carried out a coup - relying on one another - but now their battle for supremacy is tearing Sudan apart.

To understand their relationship we need to go back a bit.

Both played key roles in the counter-insurgency against Darfuri rebels, in the civil war in Sudan's western region that began in 2003.

Gen Burhan rose to control the Sudanese army in Darfur.

Hemedti was the commander of one of the many Arab militias, collectively known as the Janjaweed, which the government employed to brutally put down the largely non-Arab Darfuri rebel groups.

Read more about it here.

A second American has died in Sudan, the White House said earlier.

The American citizen was killed on Tuesday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, even though a ceasefire was largely holding yesterday.

During a briefing, Kirby told reporters that violence levels "appear to have gone significantly down" and that the United States was actively facilitating the departure of a small number of Americans seeking to leave Sudan.

He said the US would continue to work diplomatically with both sides for a lasting ceasefire.

Nick Garnett
Reporting from Cyprus

Image source, Getty Images

The British High Commissioner to Cyprus, Irfan Siddiq, has defended the evacuation operation which is under way in Sudan.

Siddiq, who also used to be British Ambassador to Sudan, told the BBC that they have contacted around a thousand of 2,500 British nationals who have registered with the Foreign Office:

He went on to explain why only 39 people were on board the first plane to land in Cyprus.

Insaf Abbas
BBC News

We've been hearing today from British people waiting to be evacuated from Sudan's Wadi Seidna airfield.

Samer, aged 18, was visiting family in Khartoum with her mother and two sisters when the conflict started. She endured more than a week of fighting between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces, sheltering at home.

But when news started to emerge that British citizens were being offered evacuation flights, the family decided to make the 20-mile (32km) journey to the airfield. Samer's father drove them, but they were stopped several times by the Rapid Support Forces. At one checkpoint, fighters fired warning shots just over their heads, before making them drive one of them to a hospital.

When I connected to Samer on a crackling phone line, she was still waiting to find out when she and her family would be flown to Cyprus, having arrived at the airport a day earlier.

"The flight going now is full of passengers, so we have to wait for the next one.

"We can't sleep properly. I haven't slept since yesterday."

The family faced the added complication that Samer's four-year-old sister doesn't have a British passport. They were initially told that she would not be eligible to travel, but say she has now been given permission.

Her father, however, has decided to stay behind in Khartoum to care for family - in the middle of a conflict that's only likely to get worse.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese and foreign nationals have been fleeing Sudan during a fragile three-day ceasefire.

Here are some of the scenes as families reunite across the world.

Dallia has been speaking to us from Port Sudan. She made the decision to flee from her home in Khartoum. She says a rocket hit her house - luckily it didn't explode but she was left with a hole in the roof.

"Where my house is located it's at the epicentre of the fighting. I'm a 10-minute drive from the airport.

"The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were patrolling the neighbourhood and block, literally on the street we were on and took over two houses. One at the front and one at the back. We were surrounded."

She says she was able to grab her mother's medication and passports as well as the cash she could carry.

"It was emergency packing, I literally had half an hour to pack clothes up and as much of the house as we could. We had to, we had no choice. We couldn’t sit and think about what we wanted to take or leave behind."

Dallia is trying to get on the Saudi boat to go to Jeddah, which we've been reporting on as one of the routes out of the country.

She says that as Sudanese nationals they don't have priority, but it's one of "the few options" she says she has.

Image source, .

Cecilia Macaulay
BBC News

Image source, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission

The Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission has confirmed to the BBC that evacuations of stranded Nigerian students in Sudan have started.

Abike Dabiri-Erewa posted a video on Twitter, external which shows students waiting outside to board buses.

Ms Dabiri-Erewa says these buses are boarding students and will then start the journey out of Sudan.

They will be taken to Egypt, and eventually flown to Nigeria, she said.

It comes just a few hours after we spoke to a university student in Khartoum who was eagerly waiting for help from Nigeria's embassy, but had felt abandoned.

There's no doubt this is a complicated story - let's get up to speed:

Who's fighting who? Two military men are battling to be in control. They are General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. Together they'd been leading a council of generals but now disagree on how Sudan should be run.

Why did it start? It's unclear who fired the first shot but members of Hemedti's paramilitary force, the Rapid Support Forces, were redeployed around the country. The military saw this as a threat and fighting swiftly escalated.

Why have civilians got caught up? Although the conflict seems to be around the control of key installations, much of the fighting is happening in built-up urban areas. So civilians have been caught in the crossfire.

Where is Sudan? It's in north-east Africa. It's one of the largest countries on the continent but it's also one of the poorest in the world.

Read more about all of this here.

Image source, .

Image source, sama-sd.org

Tributes are being paid to a doctor killed in Khartoum, where he had stayed to look after elderly patients.

Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman, a Sudanese-American medic, was attacked and stabbed in front of his house in the Sudanese capital, later dying in hospital.

He had gone out on Tuesday morning - when the tentative ceasefire began - to take his father to a hospital appointment.

His friend and colleague Yasir Elamin remembers him as “someone who felt firmly that life was about giving back”.

Dr Sulieman had once practised in the US, where he was a founding member of the Sudanese-American Physicians Association, and more recently had been training doctors at home.

“He was someone who believed in Sudan. He spent a significant amount of his time educating the next generation of Sudanese doctors. He was very charismatic ... everybody loved him," Dr Elamin told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme.

It's not thought that Dr Sulieman was killed by either of the warring sides - but rather as a result of the lawlessness now sweeping the city.

Dr Elaim, the current Sudanese-American Physicians Association president, said this kind of disorder was coming as shock to Khartoum residents, as the city has always been regarded as “one of the safest African capitals”, despite conflict elsewhere in Sudan over the decades.

Image source, Reuters

Our reporter on the ground has described the difficulty of getting reliable information in Khartoum, with competing claims by different parties.

Mohamed Osman said both sides frequently claim to have gained control of important sites like airports and army bases, but that it is often hard to establish the truth.

He says there is no internet and sometimes phone calls are very poor. With no third party to clarify what is going on, it's a difficult situation and can be very difficult to clarify who controls which sites.

Let's turn to the situation on the ground now.

We've just been speaking to our reporter in Khartoum, Mohamed Osman, who says many of those still in the Sudanese capital are struggling to secure clean water and food.

The banks are not working so people are finding it difficult to get hold of cash to buy things. There is a severe fuel shortage in the city and most shops are closed, so residents are struggling to find bread and other basic supplies.

He says checkpoints set up by both sides of the conflict have made it difficult for those in need of medical treatment to get to hospital, and that even the facilities that remain open are suffering from a lack of doctors and supplies.

Osman says things have improved since the first few days of the conflict, when "all the time we were lying on the ground because of the explosions".

He and his family can still often hear explosions and gunfire near their home, and it's difficult to sleep, but he says things have got better in the last few days.

Osman says previously he had to pass through as many as 10 checkpoints to travel 20km (12 miles) but that number has now fallen.

James Landale
Diplomatic correspondent

More now on the damage to the runway in Khartoum that we reported earlier.

Here's the latest update on how it's looking.

At the airport in Cyprus, we've been speaking to the senior military commander in charge of the evacuation. Brigadier Dan Reeve played down fears the state of the runway would impact the mission.

He said air traffic controllers told his pilots how to avoid the damage when they landed and that his engineers were repairing the runway.

“The airstrip itself - while not as perfectly billiard smooth as Heathrow - is better for example, by some margin than the desert landing strips that the aircraft are trained and designed to operate on. So we're very happy with that."

Image source, Reuters

Just joining us or need a recap? Here's the latest.

The fighting: A three day ceasefire is in place, but it is fragile. There have been reports of clashes in the capital Khartoum and the nearby city of Omdurman. At least 459 people have been killed since the violence broke out 11 days ago, though the actual number is expected to be much higher.

British evacuations: The first plane carrying British nationals has landed at Stansted Airport. More than 300 people have boarded four evacuation flights from Sudan, but hundreds of Brits remain stranded and the BBC has learned that the airstrip used for evacuations is suffering damage.

People on the move: Tens of thousands of Sudanese and foreign nationals are trying to get out, according to the UN, with long queues at the border with Egypt

Lack of supplies: People on the ground in Sudan's capital Khartoum are reporting shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and cash.

Mass release of prisoners: Residents speak of growing lawlessness following a mass release of prisoners and an upsurge in looting.

Safe routes to the UK: The Home Secretary Suella Braverman says there are no plans for safe routes to the UK for non-British people feeling Sudan.

Charley Adams
Reporting from Stansted Airport

In between buses of British evacuees arriving, I spoke to a woman who was waiting for her father.

Maha was stood at the bus terminal with a bunch of flowers and hot drinks for her father.

"I’m so relieved he’s here," she told me.

Maha said her father had only arrived in Sudan for work a few days before the fighting started.

After registering her dad with the Foreign Office, she said communication was good and they were offered them emotional and practical support.

Maha said the only chaotic moments were when her father was told to go straight to the airport.

She also told me about WhatsApp groups that had been set up in Sudan to help evacuees.

Showing me group chats on her phone, she said young people from Sudan and the UK set up chats to help people travel across the country.

She explained that people travelling to the airport would use the WhatsApp groups to plan safe travel or ask for meeting points.

The World Health Organization has said it is conducting an "extensive" risk assessment of a potential public health threat following the seizure of Sudan's National Public Health Laboratory, located in Khartoum.

Fighters stormed the facility in the country's capital, which stores samples of pathogens including measles, cholera and polio.

The WHO's incident manager for Sudan, Oliver le Polain, said having "untrained individuals in the lab" could result in an increased public health risk and that the assessment is "ongoing".

Image source, Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

Let's turn now to director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has been giving a media briefing on the latest in Sudan.

He says in the capital Khartoum, nearly two-thirds of health facilities are closed and roughly one in six are operating as normal.

Nurses and doctors from Sudan have told the BBC about the difficulties of caring for people in hospitals - one spoke of the fear of being shot.