London announced on Saturday that it had rushed nearly 1,900 people out of Sudan in a matter of days – starting on Tuesday – taking advantage of a fragile ceasefire as the northeast African country’s merciless war enters its third week.

About 2,000 British nationals were on the Foreign Office’s list and those eligible for emergency departure had until yesterday morning to arrive at an air base and board the last flights.

A total of 1,888 people were evacuated from Sudan by 21 Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft that took off from Wadi Saidna air base, north of Khartoum, according to the Foreign Office.

Initially, the business was exclusively for British passport holders and their relatives with UK residence permits.

But following an outcry in Britain, around twenty Sudanese doctors working for Britain’s National Health System (NHS) were also eventually transferred out of the country.

Sudan was plunged into chaos when a bloody power struggle erupted on April 15 between the head of the military junta, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the second-in-command of the military regime, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, or “Khameti”, head of the dreaded Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The fighting since then has killed at least 528 people and wounded another 4,599, according to the latest official figures released on Saturday. Tens of thousands of Sudanese fled to neighboring states, notably Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad and South Sudan, while foreign governments scrambled to evacuate their nationals.