NAIROBI, Kenya — It began with a helicopter evacuation of American diplomats from Sudan’s besieged capital city just after midnight Sunday, then turned into a full-fledged exodus of foreign officials and citizens of other nations as the battle raged around them.
At the United States Embassy in Khartoum, an elite team of Navy SEALs ushered up to 90 people onto aircraft before taking off for Djibouti, 800 miles away.
Hours later, a United Nations convoy began snaking its way out of the city, starting a 525-mile drive to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, while British and French diplomats were escorted to an airfield outside the city where military cargo planes were waiting.
Other groups headed for Qadarif, a small town near the border with Ethiopia, and a boat chartered by Saudi Arabia carried its fleeing diplomats across the Red Sea.
After days of fruitless diplomatic efforts to get two warring Sudanese generals to lay down their weapons, foreign governments took another tack this weekend: fleeing a country, long viewed as strategically important, that has been in the grip of intense fighting for over a week.