A British doctor has reportedly been shot in the leg while trying to rescue his mother in Sudan as the country descended into chaos.
The man, who recently retired having worked for the NHS for three decades, was visiting his family in Khartoum to celebrate Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.
But fierce fighting between Sudan’s top two generals erupted in the city on April 15, putting the large northeast-African country on the path to civil war.
Speaking to The Independent, the doctor’s daughter said his mother and another of his daughters had been without water for five days at his brother’s house close to the capital’s airport. He decided then that they needed to be taken to a safer place.
The first daughter – a British doctor based in London – told the newspaper that her father drove a Land Rover to the house at dusk on Thursday, but his car came under fire from ‘all directions’, and he was shot in the thigh.
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The woman, named as Dr. A by The Independent in order to protect her family’s identity in Sudan, said: ‘They started shooting at the car first. My father kept going, but then he stopped because the shooting was coming from all directions.
‘When he got out he started to feel faint. He felt an intense heat on his leg, but because of his intense fear and adrenaline, he didn’t pay attention.’
She said Sudan’s paramilitary forces – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – shot at her father because he was driving the Land Rover – a make of car often used by the country’s national forces with whom RSF are now in open conflict with.
Dr A said her father eventually persuaded the RSF fighters that he was just a medic trying to rescue his family, and made it to his brother’s house.
However, when his second daughter – who is also a doctor – opened the door, she noticed blood on his clothes, Dr A said.
The father was brought inside and his wound was dressed, before they made the treacherous journey back to the home where his mother usually lives in the city.
Because of the danger involved in taking their injured father to a pharmacy or hospital, Dr A said her sister has been forced to treat him at home with leftover antibiotics.
‘He was shot in the thigh, so the wound is quite superficial. But the actual car has gunshots where the headrests and backrests are,’ Dr A told the newspaper.
The British-Sudanese dual national said had her father been in a different position in the car, ‘then he would be dead.’
Now, she says she is most concerned about her family’s dwindling food supplies, and their supply of medicine. They also do not have reliable running water, and an intermittent internet connection, making their situation even more challenging.
Dr. A said that the UK government has done little to help her family and other British nationals trapped in the country as it descends into ‘chaos’.
She said she was able to speak to someone at the Foreign Office on Saturday – a week after the fighting broke out – but was told only to register her family’s names on a list of people who need to be evacuated from the embattled country.
Earlier today. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that Britain will begin evacuating British citizens trapped in Sudan today after being accused of abandoning them.
Military flights will evacuate at least 2,000 British nationals with a UK passport from an airfield outside the capital of Khartoum as a three-day ceasefire came into effect.
