A woman from Oxford trapped in Sudan was forced to “pass by dead bodies” and see her husband “held at gunpoint” before being told evacuating the war zone was not possible.
Niam Ali, who lives in Botley and went to school in Cowley, is stuck in Sudan with her two-year-old son Yousif and her husband Mohammed Yassien after they were turned away from boarding an evacuation flight.
The conflict in Sudan started on April 15 after rival factions of the military government started clashing in western Sudan, Khartoum and the Darfur region.
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According to local and international NGOs, the confirmed death toll in Sudan has now passed 420, including 264 civilians and more than 3,700 people have been wounded.
Ms Ali, a pharmacist, made the “very dangerous” journey with her family to an airfield in Omdurman, which is near Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum, but after sleeping on an airfield strip overnight she was told her husband’s lack of visa prevented them from leaving.
Mr Yassien, a mechanical engineer, is a Sudanese national and does not have a visa which allows him to travel to the UK.
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When fighting first broke out in Sudan, Ms Ali’s family fled to her husband’s family home in the countryside.
However, as the vicious power struggle within the country’s military leadership intensified, Ms Ali soon received an email from the UK government advising that they evacuated the country as soon as possible.
Due to Mr Yassien not having a visa, Ms Ali’s mother phoned the UK embassy to check that immediate relatives would be allowed to board the same flight out.
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She was given the assurance that Mr Yassien and his family would not be left stranded on the airfield with no where to go.
However, when the family started the treacherous journey to the airfield on April 27, they were not to know that this assurance would not be enough.
Speaking about the frightening journey, Ms Ali explained: “We took a very dangerous eight-hour journey to the airfield in Omdurman.
“We risked going through lots of checkpoints where people were often shot at.”
At one of these checkpoints, Ms Ali’s husband had a near death experience.
She revealed: “We were going through a checkpoint and my husband didn’t see one of the soldiers, who then fired a gunshot at us, so we were forced to stop immediately.
“He started shouting at my husband.
“Next, he was held on the floor at gunpoint.
“We told him that we were foreign citizens and evacuating the country.”
Ms Ali said her son Yousif then started to “tease and mess around” with the soldier.
Fortunately, the soldier then started to “relax” and let the family continue on their journey to the airfield.
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Ms Ali said that after they left their house at around 7am they managed to get to the evacuation point at 3pm in the afternoon.
While waiting at the airfield for their escape out of the country, Ms Ali said they checked their passports and they saw her husband didn’t have a visa but assured her this would not be an issue.
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After the family was told they had to “condense” their luggage and had chucked away many of their possessions, they were informed that no flights were leaving until the next day.
Ms Ali said they slept on the airfield and Yousif was given a cardboard box to sleep in.
The next day, Ms Ali was told they could board the flight but she would have to leave her husband behind in Sudan.
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Ms Ali desperately tried to persuade the officers in charge to let Mr Yassien on the flight, and promised he would “not seek asylum in the UK”.
Ms Ali pointed out that she had a house and a job in the UK so could provide for her husband.
Going back to Mr Yassien’s family home in the countryside was not an option, Ms Ali revealed.
She said: “We literally passed dead bodies to get to the airfield.”
Ms Ali, who regularly visits Sudan to see her husband, told the Oxford Mail that her husband has never applied for a visa before as he has seen no need for one.
She explained: “The only reason he now needs to leave Sudan is because we are in danger”.
Ms Ali’s family is now living in Khartoum and she said they hear “gunshots and explosions” nearby where they are staying on a daily basis.
Fighter jets regularly fire at places near where the family is residing and homes nearby are “struck by missiles”.
Ms Ali said her family had been told by the Home Office that over 2,000 people had already been evacuated and they were not given assurances they would be given help to escape the country.
Oxford MP Layla Moran has raised Ms Ali’s case in Parliament and has highlighted that “separation is not an option for them”.
She has called for the Home Office to apply “cool headed common sense” and said the UK “risked failing these young children who should be and are citizens of this country”.
A UK Government spokesman said: “The UK has carried out by far the longest and largest evacuation of any Western country from Sudan, bringing 2,450 people to safety.
"It has always been the case that the evacuation has been open to British nationals and their eligible family members, with a later exemption for NHS clinicians.
“Preventing a humanitarian emergency in Sudan is our focus right now.
"Alongside the UK evacuation effort, we are working with international partners and the United Nations to bring an end to fighting.”
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Ed specialises in writing political stories for the Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times.
He joined in the team in February 2023, after completing a History undergraduate degree at the University of York and studying for his NCTJ diploma in London.
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