At this time, there are 16,000 Americans imprisoned in Sudan’s war-torn country, where the most recent armistice has been broken.
However, while that in itself is terrible, the World Health Organization official warned that something even worse could happen.
According to CNN, Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO’s representative in Sudan, stated that a paramilitary organization had taken control of the National Public Health Laboratory Khartoum “extremely dangerous because we have polio isolates in the lab, we have measles isolates in the lab, we have cholera isolates in the lab.”
“There is a huge biological risk associated with the occupation of the central public health lab in Khartoum by one of the fighting parties,” he said.
CNN said that “a high-ranking medical source” told them that the Rapid Support Force, which is fighting for control of the country, had taken control of the facility.
“The danger lies in the outbreak of any armed confrontation in the laboratory because that will turn the laboratory into a germ bomb,” CNN quoted the source as saying.
“An urgent and rapid international intervention is required to restore electricity and secure the laboratory from any armed confrontation because we are facing a real biological danger,” the source said.
According to The Hill, dengue disease and malaria are plaguing Sudan, making the lab’s employment much more difficult.
A WHO statement said “trained laboratory technicians no longer have access to the laboratory” and that the facility had suffered power cuts, meaning “it is not possible to properly manage the biological materials,” CNN reported.
Fox News reported Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed on Monday that he helped arrange the terms for a 72-hour cease-fire.
However, CNN reported on Tuesday that gunshots in the streets and fighter jets in the sky indicated that the cease-fire had not taken effect.
CNN stated, the 11-day fighting has killed at least 459 people and injured over 4,000 more.
Although US Marines departed the US embassy in Khartoum on Saturday, NBC reports that an estimated 16,000 Americans remain in the country.
“The city was complete mayhem when I left,” travel writer Lakshmi Parthasarathy of New Bedford, Connecticut, told NBC, adding that rides to port cities where ships are waiting cost thousands of dollars.
“There were women, children, families who were escaping villages along the way. I thought at the time that only Khartoum had seen the most destruction, but we saw villages that had clearly been devastated by the war,” Parthasarathy told NBC.
As the confusion grew, Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed his concern for the detained Americans in a letter to Blinken, comparing it to the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan in 2021.
“I have grave concerns for the safety of all American citizens in Sudan, including private citizens, official U.S. government employees, and their family members. The Afghanistan Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) in 2021 demonstrated the consequences of failing to plan adequately for worst-case scenarios, mixed messaging by the State Department, unclear chains of command, the inadequate coordination between the State Department and the Department of Defense, and the failure to coordinate with private organizations evacuating American citizens,” he wrote.
“Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the Afghanistan evacuation, I seek clarification of several key issues necessary for a successful evacuation of American citizens in Sudan,” McCaul said in the letter on his website.