PORT SUDAN, Sudan — A few weeks ago, Ahmed al-Hassan was a medical student in Sudan working on a campaign to help refugees from a neighboring country.
Then, the forces of two rival generals went to battle in the streets of the capital, Khartoum, and he was forced to flee himself.
He left behind his home, his textbooks and the paperwork proving he was a student — stuffing basic necessities into a suitcase and a backpack — to escape with his ailing mother from the bullets, warplanes and shelling.
After a harrowing 14-hour bus ride across the country, they arrived in the seaside city of Port Sudan, where thousands of Sudanese and foreigners have gathered in hopes of catching a boat or a plane out of the country to safety.
Standing in a line of evacuees waiting to board a rescue ship to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday morning — a 10-hour voyage across the Red Sea — Mr. al-Hassan, 21, said he knew that he was one of a lucky few Sudanese with the means and connections to find a way out of the conflict threatening to tear his country apart: He was born in Saudi Arabia, and has legal residency there, giving him and his mother a way out in the part of the evacuation efforts that Saudi authorities are overseeing.