Due to the extremely inhospitable terrain that has created a chokehold around the people of Khartoum, Haris Theoharidis, President of the Union of Sudanese Greeks. “Until last night, we were talking to our compatriots in Khartoum. Now they stopped picking up the phone, we are losing communication, ”he says to“ K ”.

At the same time, following the relevant instructions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Dendias, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Crisis Management Department, is in constant communication with the International Red Cross in order to immediately provide the best medical assistance to the two wounded Greeks, taking into account the military situation prevailing in Sudan.

Unfortunately, according to Mr. Theoharidis, the 24-hour truce declared yesterday has not come into force. “However, if this is not implemented, at least for a few hours, so that people can leave Khartoum, people will start dying from fire and gradually from hunger. And someone can be in the church with the metropolitan, and someone in the Pagulat hotel, but most of the Greek community, God knows Fr.Ouchmanaged to hide. We hear about 270 dead, but who confirms all this? The streets are talking about the dead.”

It is noted that, according to correspondents of international media, military aircraft attacked four hospitals in Khartoum.

Paid mercenaries and the identity of the Greek community of Khartoum

As for the political part of the hostilities, which began in a coordinated manner on Holy Saturday (04/15/2023), K. Theoharidis says that etcthis is a different conflict than what has been going on for the last few years.

“This time, we see no other manifestation Civil War War, we see two powerful military groups trying to seize power. The people are absent. The 2020 uprising, led by educated women, was a shining moment for Sudan, but it did not have a happy ending.

People thought that he succeeded in expelling Omar al-Bashir, but in the end this did not happen,” says H. Theoharidis and continues: another general, Mohammed Dagalo (known as “Khemedi”), is the “butcher of Darfur” working with the Russians to give them all the riches of the gold mines.

Both armies are now, according to Mr. Theoharidis, equally strong. “Burhan has planes and a lot of weapons, but the RSF mercenaries are actually paid mercenaries as they move from Darfur to Libya and from there to Yemen, depending on the purpose. Ethey have experience and knowledge of guerrilla warfare in the field“.

H. Theoharidis describes how the vast majority (at the same time 10,000) of the Greeks living in Sudan returned to Greece or left for Europe and the USA in 1970, after the establishment of the dictatorship of Jamal Nimeiri, which lasted 16 years.

As he says: “Currently the community is about 150 people. Of these, about 40 people from the old parish and 100 children of Greeks who married Sudanese women, or spouses of Greeks. And among these people, unfortunately, there is a group of young children from 15 to 24 years old, from Greek fathers and Sudanese mothers, abandoned by their families. The community in Greece often sends money to these children through the metropolitan. Because of what is happening now, we have lost sight of them.”

In any case, Mr. Theoharidis says that, apparently, the rescue of Greek citizens will be a very difficult task. “When the airport is not working, the other options are extremely dangerous, since the situation in a large part of the Sudanese province, for example, in Darfur, is either borderline or dangerous,” he emphasizes.

“The SRB army began looting in the city”

The dramatic picture he gives of another day and of Pavlos Pagulatosthe son of Thanasis Pagoulatos, who, along with ten other people, is locked up in a hotel the family has run since 1952 in Khartoum.

“This morning I spoke to my father again. The picture is the same: the people in the hotel “crammed”, and the “useful” products were sharply reduced. Don’t forget they don’t have electricity for cooking,” he says, adding: “They tell us that The RSF soldiers who had taken over the city started looting and attacking the people. They are still rebelling against the citizens, unfortunately.”.