and the singer harry belafonte has died. welcome to bbc news. we start in sudan and developments in the last hour or so with the uk government urging british passport holders to head to an airfield to the north of khartoum, tojoin evacuation flights. previous advice to wait until they are contacted has been dropped. the foreign secretary, james cleverly, said uk nationals would have to make the riskyjourney to the airbase without a military escort and warned it is impossible to know how long the pause in the fierce fighting will last. the first of the british transport planes took off from an airbase in cyprus bound for sudan it s thought there may be up to four thousand britons in sudan, a little over two thousand have registered with the foreign office for evacuation. rishi sunak authorised the operation late on monday night, after growing criticism that only diplomats had been rescued with british nationals left feeling abandoned. france, germany, greece,