question about whether it could collapse. as this hours long operation took place. take a look at that map there they had to get and this is three helicopters from djibouti across ethiopia. sudan safely land in khartoum on the ground for less than an hour load up the diplomatic staff, the family members and a few other nationals less than 100, but a significant number. and then get everybody out. and that includes, of course, the 100 troops. special operations forces who were part of this back the way they came a refueling stop in ethiopian all the way back out, so at any point along this route, the ceasefire could have got could have fallen apart. even more. the fighting could have gotten worse. there could have been all sorts of technical issues, but the operation went off. i don t want to say without a hitch, but president joe biden made the decision to go ahead with this operation, and it was executed well, and we got news late last night of the safe evacuation of the embassy. of c
were back live in the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. us diplomatic personnel and their families are now safely out of sudan as the african nation descends into increasing violence. they were airlifted to neighboring djibouti and a dramatic overnight evacuation about 100. us special operations forces carried out a daring mission today, the u. s embassy in khartoum is closed. and the decision to evacuate personnel comes after a week of heavy fighting between sudan s military and arrival paramilitary group more than 400 people have been killed, including one american, the state department says there are about 16,000, potentially as many as 19,000 americans in sudan. most though, are dual nationals and our correspondents are well positioned here. and overseas to bring you all of the angles of this developing story. let s go to cnn s sam kiley live from djibouti. he s gonna be there in just a moment. let s
fighting will really ramp up, particularly in khartoum. what s been happening is that they re spending intense bombing campaign by the sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces. the opposing side they ve been going house to house really using homes as military installations, and it s you know, it s just heartbreaking. i absolutely and so it sounds like from what you re saying. justin is that these generals are essentially waiting for all of the foreign nationals to get out of the country before they can start going at each other. is that essentially what is going on here and i guess we re viewers at home who are wondering why does this matter to me? why does the fate of sudan matter to all of us? yeah, i think a lot of your viewers will probably be familiar with the war in darfur that started in 2003. so the rapid support forces are really the evolution of the january forces that committed most of those crimes. and so, you know, i think that what we re seeing today is really a
you ve been in contact with people in country in sudan right now, what can you tell us about how they re doing how they re coping with? what is obviously a very chaotic situation to say the least. yeah i was just speaking with folks who i know who were when i was in the green room, and i think it just breaks your heart. i mean, i have a friend who s sister is nine months pregnant. um somebody who i had hired, you know, she s trapped in her home. she can t figure out how to escape because they don t know how to get fuel how to get to safety. and so you have so many friends. so many contacts there people who you ve spent years with the really in a situation where they don t know how to escape and how to get to safety. what s happened over the past couple of days is there has been an announced ceasefire. which has partially held. i think that the evacuation of diplomats and of some international um, individuals has partially been the reason why there hasn t been a lot of fighting. um but