Fighting in Sudan: China urges its many nationals to stay safe
Smoke in eastern Khartoum, April 17, 2023. © AFP
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1 min
Deadly fighting between rival factions has left more than 100 people dead and 1,000 injured in Sudan. Foreign chancelleries have called on their nationals to stay safe. In particular, the Chinese embassy in Sudan while more than a hundred Chinese companies are established in the country.
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With our correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde
This is the "maximum alert" that the Chinese embassy in Khartoum has triggered among its nationals, invited to caulk at home and "stay away from windows and away from rooms with street views". Instructions that come back to each crisis in a Sudan shunned by the West since the coup d'état of October 2021 and regularly plagued by trouble, but which still has a strong Chinese presence today – among the largest on the continent.
Investment from China began in 1996. They were relaunched again in June 2022, with the opening of a first direct maritime line between Port Sudan and Qingdao on China's east coast, linking the Red Sea to the Yellow Sea as part of China's new silk roads.
China is Sudan's largest trading partner with a volume of $2.5 billion traded in 2021, down from $3 billion in 2020. 130 Chinese companies are on site, operating in hydrocarbons, as well as in many infrastructure projects requiring a large Chinese workforce, although many expatriates returned to China because of the violence two years ago.
On Sunday, China called on the two warring sides to "cease fire as soon as possible to avoid further escalation."
► Read also: Report - In Khartoum, civilians caught in the crossfire of the army and paramilitaries
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- Sudan
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