Almost a week after the launch of Operation Kaveri, the 14th batch of Indians stranded in strife-torn Sudan was evacuated late on Saturday.
"14th batch of Indians leaves Port Sudan under OperationKaveri. 288 passengers onboard INS Teg are enroute to Jeddah," said a tweet by Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi.
Over 2,500 Indians have so far been evacuated from Sudan as the situation in the African country continues to worsen. There were over 3,000 Indians in Sudan, reports quoting MEA said earlier.
Meanwhile, the seventh outbound flight carrying 229 passengers left Jeddah, where India set up a transit camp, on Sunday morning for Bengaluru. This comes as a batch of 365 people landed in New Delhi from Jeddah on Saturday evening.
Till Saturday afternoon, over 754 people have arrived back home in two batches under the evacuation mission. The total number of Indians who were brought back home now stands at 1,725, according to official data.
While the first batch of 360 evacuees returned to New Delhi in a commercial plane on Wednesday, the second batch of 246 Indian evacuees arrived in Mumbai in a C17 Globemaster aircraft of the IAF on Thursday.
Open to talks?
Fighting between Sudan's army and the paramilitary group continued on Saturday too as air strikes and artillery rocked Khartoum despite a ceasefire. Heavy clashes could be heard near downtown Khartoum, close to the army headquarters and the presidential palace, on Saturday, reported Reuters.
Meanwhile, a U.N. envoy said negotiations could be in the pipeline. U.N. special representative in Sudan Volker Perthes told Reuters though the military and RSF have so far shown no sign of compromise were now more open to negotiations - though no date had been set.
Though Army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan ruled out any negotiations with RSF's "rebel" leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo or Hemedti, there is a change in attitude. "The word 'negotiations' or 'talks' was not there in their discourse in the first week or so," he said.
Both factions have now nominated representatives for talks, likely to be held in Jeddah or Juba in South Sudan. However, there was a practical question over whether they could get there to actually sit together, Perthes added. The immediate task was to develop a monitoring mechanism for ceasefires. "They have both accepted that this war cannot continue," Perthes added.
