Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 28) — The first batch of Filipinos evacuated from war-torn Sudan will hopefully be back in the Philippines next week, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Friday.
“I am confident as well that next week, I wouldn’t say Monday, but surely next week we’ll be receiving the first group of Filipino repatriates to the Philippines,” DFA Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega told CNN Philippines’ The Source.
The Philippine government has started evacuating Filipinos in Khartoum after it raised the crisis status in Sudan to Alert Level 3 due to the ongoing conflict there.
De Vega said authorities are currently focusing on the 350 Filipinos evacuated from Khartoum that have reached the Sudan-Egypt border. These individuals are still waiting for their entry visa, he noted.
The release of the visa is currently taking days from the usual few hours due to the sheer volume of applications Egyptian authorities are receiving, he explained.
Another problem Philippine authorities are addressing is the lack of documents for some of those evacuated, De Vega said.
De Vega added two buses with a total of 116 Filipinos are also set to leave the Sudanese capital Friday morning.
From the Sudan-Egypt border, they will be transported to the city of Aswan, which is about four hours away, De Vega said. They will then be given accommodation there until authorities are able to bring them to Cairo either by air or land, he noted.
De Vega said the Philippine government will shoulder all the expenses of the evacuated Filipinos, including their commercial flights back to Manila.
The Department of National Defense has also offered the use of its C-130 planes, De Vega said.
So far, no evacuated Filipino has reached Cairo, aside from those who left with their employer after the alert level was raised, the DFA official said.
De Vega said some of them are now in Greece, while some are in Jeddah.
In total, 496 Filipinos were already evacuated from Khartoum, the DFA noted.
“Of these 496, 414 are at the border between Egypt and Sudan, or have already crossed the border into Egypt,” it said “58 are in Port Sudan, awaiting the ship that will bring them to Jeddah.”
