Two more Self-Defense Forces aircraft have left for Djibouti, the Defense Ministry said Saturday, as Japan prepares to evacuate its nationals from Sudan, where military clashes are ongoing.
A total of 63 Japanese citizens, including embassy staff, were in Sudan as of Wednesday, a government official said earlier.
A C-2 transport aircraft and a KC-767 aerial refueling plane will join a C-130 transport airplane that left Japan on Friday to stand by in Djibouti, where the SDF has a base as part of an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden.
The ministry has formed a task force to carry out the evacuation consisting of around 370 personnel from the Ground and Air Self-Defense forces.
Fighting between Sudan’s armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has escalated, including at the airport in the country’s capital Khartoum, making it difficult for people to evacuate.
The World Health Organization says 413 people have been killed and 3,551 wounded in the fighting across Sudan, but the actual death toll is thought to be higher, with many wounded unable to reach hospitals.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference Thursday that the government is in touch with all of the Japanese citizens currently in Sudan.
“We’ll work closely with other major countries, including Group of Seven nations, and do our best to secure the safety of Japanese citizens,” the top government spokesman said.
In the past, SDF aircraft were sent overseas to evacuate Japanese nationals five times. No Cabinet approval is needed for such a dispatch of SDF aircraft.
The U.S. military is preparing options to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Sudan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday as the Biden administration weighed whether to pull personnel out of the country’s increasingly unstable capital.