A junior doctor from Brighton has told of her terrifying flight from Sudan after armed fighting broke out during a family holiday.
Amie Sadig, 35, fled the “living nightmare” with her husband and four young daughters and made it home to Hove a few days ago.
Fighting broke out in Sudan on Saturday 15 April and since then more than 500 people have been killed and about 5,000 injured.
Dr Sadig said: “We woke up to the sounds of gunfire and bombing and then the whole country was in chaos.
“It was just literally a living nightmare. We didn’t know how to get out. We didn’t have any information.
“And then, when we heard that EU countries were helping British nationals, we just decided that we just needed to get our children out.
“We were lying awake at night thinking, is this it? Are we going to make it out? And it was terrifying. It was really, really terrifying.”
Dr Sadig was in Sudan for a family break over Easter and Ramadan.
The conflict started days before she was due to leave with her husband Nasir, 40, an engineer, and their four daughters. Their oldest daughter is eight years old and their youngest just four months.
Dr Sadig said: “The British government were very slow in arranging any sort of evacuation. Other EU countries were quicker.”
She said that she tried phoning the British authorities but couldn’t get through, adding: “I sent emails. They weren’t replied to.
“The decision to leave was just … it was so overwhelming. We didn’t know whether it was safer to stay or safer to leave. There was no communication.”
The Foreign Office advice appeared to be to sit tight, she said, and go out only if you’re prepared to risk your lives.
But staying put carried risks, including an airstrike on the village where her husband’s family live.
As EU countries started to arrange evacuation flights during a brief ceasefire – and with their baby formula running out – the family made the decision to flee.
Dr Sadig said: “We were going to catch a Dutch flight – and only got a British plane by chance.
“We relied a lot on social media groups to get to the airstrip (at Wadi Seidna military air base north of Khartoum) using the quieter routes.
“When we did get there, all the British Army staff were great – really supportive and really helpful. They provided us with food and water.”
And she praised the International Red Cross and Red Crescent for their response when the family landed at their next stop, in Cyprus.
The family’s route to safety had taken them across a bridge where, shortly after they crossed it, there was gunfire.
Dr Sadig said: “The bridge was closed immediately after we got there so, had we missed it by minutes, we wouldn’t have been able to make it out. The streets were just unrecognisable.”
The family ended up on the first British evacuation flight out of Sudan. Dr Sadig said: “There were only 39 people on our plane. Other planes had many more. There were 4,000 British nationals there.”
She said that she knew some other doctors there and also said that, despite the overall number of Britons who were keen to leave, “I think they only managed to get out a thousand.”
But by last night, the British government was understood to have organised 23 flights, evacuating 2,122 people, including Dr Sadig’s brother.
She added: “It took a while to get the organisation (of the evacuations) going.
“Had we not made it out when we did, it would have been super tricky but we just had to get the kids out.”
Dr Sadig’s relief at making it home safely to Brighton and Hove is tempered by her fears for the friends and family she has had to leave behind.
