In the early hours of Monday, one of the twenty-six vehicles carrying stranded Nigerians from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, to Port Sudan, where they would then travel to Saudi Arabia, caught fire.
Following the challenges encountered in getting the initial batch of evacuees across the Egyptian borders, over 1000 Nigerians are now being evacuated through the Port Sudan channel.
The stranded Nigerians had been waiting for a trip back to Nigeria for five days at the borders after Egyptian authorities barred them from entering the nation.
This was revealed by a witness to the unpleasant incident happened around 2:30 am Sudan time and all the passengers managed to leave unharmed and have since resumed their trip to Port Sudan, as reported by DT.
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“One of the buses conveying some 50 Nigerian students from Sudan with a tag number (Katsina 1) heading to Port Sudan as part of the second batch of FGN evacuation got damaged due to excessive heat from one of the vehicle’s tyres.
“Dr Hashim Idris Na’Allah, the chairman of the Nigerian Elders’ Forum in Sudan, was one of the passengers in the said bus, which contained a total of 50 students (49 males, 1 female).
“The driver stopped the bus near an RSF checkpoint, just before the tire exploded causing a fire to start. All the passengers escaped unhurt”.
“Forty out of the 50 passengers were later distributed to the other buses evacuating the students, while the remaining passengers spent the night where the incident happened alongside the driver at the RSF checkpoint.
“The students said the RSF really did their possible best to help the passengers and offered them with cups of tea in the morning before they left,” Sani Aliyu who is in Sudan disclosed”.
