Evacuated North Yorkshire aid worker calls on government to do more to help Sudan

• Video report by Tina Gelder

A humanitarian aid worker who was forced to flee Sudan after fighting broke out says she is lucky to be alive.

Emily Keal, from Malton in North Yorkshire, was working with the United Nations in Khartoum when the conflict began last month.

After an anxious wait for news, her family has now welcomed her home.

She said: "It's quite surreal. I feel very much like I've left my head and heart in Khartoum but of course I'm very, very lucky to be alive and back with my family."

Armed fighting between rival factions of the military government of Sudan began on 15 April, when clashes broke out in western Sudan, Khartoum and the Darfur region.

At least 1,000 people have been killed and more than 5,100 others injured.

The day before fighting started, Emily was canoeing on the River Nile with friends.

Even then, she says they thought it would be over within days.

"We're used to civilian unrest, we're used to protests, we receive daily security warnings about gunfire - this is something which is part of normal life [in Sudan], and Sudanese people are incredibly resilient," said Emily.

"When the air strikes started, that's when we realised that this would not end anytime soon."

She said she worries about the fate of people in the conflict area.

"I work a lot with Sudanese people - one of the most wonderful things about Sudan is how welcoming and kind and open-hearted the people are," said Emily.

"From the guy who took me in the rickshaw everyday to work, I don't know his whereabouts or if his family's OK, to the lady who served us coffee everyday.

"Friends who you don't hear from maybe for a day, or a couple of hours, and then you hear in the news you hear about continuing air strikes and gunfire, and you don't know if they've been targeted, if they've been hit.

"That's something that's incredibly difficult to deal with."

When it was at its worst, Emily said there were gunshots in her garden, bullets going through the windows of the apartment above hers, and the "booming" sounds of airstrikes.

"Being disconnected from communication and only relying on what you can hear, which is just gunshots and bombardment, and just not knowing when it was going to end was terrifying," she said.

"Luckily fighting was only spreading to my specific neighbourhood as I was getting out, but I had friends and loved ones who had the RSF [Rapid Support Forces] in their gardens, entering homes."

While Emily escaped unscathed, a friend's mother was raped during the violence, and a colleague was shot dead while trying to flee with his wife and children.

"There was a time when I wasn't sure we would make it out of Khartoum - we didn't know when we would be evacuated," said Emily.

During the trip to Port Sudan, from where she was eventually evacuated, Emily and her friends were stopped several times by the military.

She says there were some "very scary" points on the journey when soldiers boarded the bus and told them not to stop in certain areas along the way.

Her mother, Di, said there were "lots of tears" when she went to pick Emily up from the airport, but that it's "fantastic to see her safely back home".

"It was a very worrying time for us all as a family," she said.

But Emily has yet to fully come to terms with her situation back in the UK, saying it's "very strange" to leave a war zone and return to rural North Yorkshire.

"There are one million people who are displaced right now in Sudan. This is something that's preventing me from accepting that life goes on," she said.

"I don't really know where to begin to process it, because it's still the reality for so many people - I feel very strongly that I was lucky enough to leave, and I'm lucky enough to be safe, and so many people do not have that privilege."

Her main concern is for the people who haven't been able to escape the country. She says the government evacuation is being hailed as a success but has "absolutely not" been one.

"I have a close friend whose father has a naturalisation certificate, is a British citizen, and his marriage is recognised by the British government, but [the friend and her family] were not contacted for the evacuation," said Emily.

"And that's just one example."

Emily says the government should help native Sudanese people too, not just those with British citizenship.

"Sudan is bleeding right now," she said. "I feel like a lot of the world is ignorant to that, especially in the UK, not establishing safe routes for Sudanese people to come in the same way as there is a scheme existing for Ukrainians."

"Why is it that the British government immediately opened safe passage [for Ukrainian refugees], immediately suddenly respected international humanitarian law?

"We've helped 175,000 Ukrainians. Why are we not offering Sudanese people the same sanctuary when they're facing the same human rights abuses and atrocities?"

In response, a government spokesperson said: "We have no plans to open a bespoke resettlement route for Sudan.

"Preventing a humanitarian emergency in Sudan is our focus right now and we are working with international partners and the United Nations to bring an end to fighting.

"Since 2015 we have offered a safe and legal route to the UK to almost half a million people seeking safety but our approach must be considered in the round, rather than on a crisis-by-crisis basis."

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