everyone. thank you so much for joining me. i m fredricka whitfield and we begin with a dramatic evacuation of u. s. government personnel and their families from sudan president biden confirming the operation overnight more than 100. special operations personnel were involved in the extraction. the decision to evacuate came after a week of heavy fighting between rival military factions that left more than 400 dead and thousands injured. we ve got full coverage with kylie atwood at the state department, kevin liptak at the white house. kylie let s begin with you. this was a big operation. i mean what was happening behind the scenes at the state department and what provoked this decision. major operation and what you have to understand with embassies like this that are in areas where conflict can arise is that the state department has plans for these evacuations. but then they have to go back and look at these plans in a very detailed way, and that s what state department offic
than an hour on the ground they were able to plug some 17 plus embassy staff and their families , plus a small number of foreign nationals, the state department said out of the country and then flying them back, at least to eat the opiate now there were no contacts with any kind of violence in that operation. there have been some unconfirmed reports that it almost simultaneously. almost simultaneously. a french evacuation effort may have come under fire, but that has been unconfirmed at this stage of british special forces and the french special forces evacuated some 100 plus people from their nationalities and other foreigners at the belgium s dutch and even the norwegians are now and germans are now carrying out their efforts. but there are 19,000 potentially americans still stuck. in sudan , many of them dual nationals, not all of them necessarily wanting to be evacuated. but this isn t just focused on khartoum. in terms of the need for evacuation. there is violence spread
courtroom thursday formally charged with aiding and abetting murder. prosecutors upgraded third degree murder to second degree felony murder. praise god oh, praise god praise god not far from the courtroom an emotional memorial service for george floyd. at one point they stood in silence, 8 minutes 46 seconds. in the days since floyd died protests have been held around the world and now a curfew in washington, d.c., has been lifted. they re keeping protestors, reporters and everyone else blocks away from the people s house. george floiyd the man was honored. the service had well-known public figures standing by floyd s family. reporter: moments of prayer and reflection for a memorial service for george floyd. everybody wants justice. we want justice for george. he s going to get it. he s going to get it. i want you guys to know that he will stand up for any injustice everywhere. can y all please say his name. george floyd. thank y all. reporter: as a cit
Operations at the us embassy in sudan. but our commitment to the sudanese people and the future they want for themselves is unending now. the president also said that he was receiving regular updates on these efforts to assist american citizens who may remain behind in khartoum. of course, there won t be that large scale military evacuation , but the president does want to keep updated on what steps are being taken to potentially get those citizens out. going forward. fredricka alright, because that is a big number. i didn t realize until sam carly mentioned 19,000 americans who are there? not necessarily working, um, in coordination with the diplomatic corps that has been evacuated. all right. thank you so much. kevin liptak , kylie atwood. and of course, sam kiley. alright let s talk more about all of this in this operation. joining me right now . juliette kayyem. she is a cnn national security analyst and a former assistant secretary at the department of home. land security. alright
Think, sam, we ve got you on the phone and we ve got a connection . there you are in djibouti. tell us about what you can was the booty now is very much the hub not only of the u. s who led the field in terms of the evacuations, but international effort involving european, middle eastern and african countries, countries from as far away as south korea and japan. they ve got a large number at least 11 foreign national aircraft, military aircraft groups of backdrop now gathered on the field here in djibouti as part of the ongoing evacuation efforts again with the us evacuation this morning local time, which is in and of itself , something of repeated involved flying via ethiopia fluently refueling there 32 aircraft implying at 100 miles an hour for eight hours or so over into khartoum, sudanese capital less