Canada will deploy about 200 members of its armed forces to coordinate the rapid evacuation of its nationals from war-torn Sudan, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday, while Ottawa says 180 Canadians have already left.

About 1,800 Canadians were in Sudan on April 15 when hostilities broke out, with about 700 of them seeking foreign affairs assistance to leave the country, according to the Canadian government.

About 180 Canadians have already been evacuated from the northeast African country thanks to help from other countries, but now the federal government is preparing its own operation to evacuate citizens, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie said earlier yesterday.

Clashes between the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries have killed hundreds of people, injured thousands, destroyed hospitals and other infrastructure and made it difficult to impossible to distribute food in the state of 46 million people, the a third of whom already needed humanitarian assistance to survive.

Fighting continued on the outskirts of the capital Khartoum yesterday, calling into question a ceasefire in the now 12-day war.

Canada has sent two C-130 Hercules aircraft near Sudan to pick up nationals when conditions permit, Ms. Anand said yesterday.

“We are monitoring the situation very closely” and the conditions for the operation to be carried out are that there is “space at the airport” in Khartoum and the Canadians “are able to get there safely”, the minister explained to reporters.

On Sunday, Ottawa announced that it had suspended the Canadian embassy in Khartoum until further notice and that members of the mission would temporarily work in a secure location outside the country. Also, earlier this week, he announced that he would take steps to facilitate Sudanese who are in Canada on temporary residence permits and may find it impossible to return due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in their homeland.