Khartoum: Firefighters have contained a large blaze that erupted in a cargo area of the Sudanese Red Sea port of Suakin, the port’s director said Thursday.
The fire, which raged for hours, broke out in the cargo drop off area of the port on Wednesday sending plumes of acrid smoke into the sky.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.
“The fire has been brought under control following the intervention of civil defense forces and port workers,” port director Taha Ahmed Mokhtar said.
He said an investigation had been launched to determine the cause of the fire, and a commission set up to assess the scale of the losses.
A port official, who spoke on condition of annonymity, had earlier described the damage as “catastrophic.”
The blaze at the port came as Sudan is gripped by a chronic economic crisis which deepened after last year’s military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.
The military takeover triggered punitive measures, including aid cuts by Western governments, who demanded the restoration of the transitional administration installed after the 2019 ouster of longtime president Omar Al-Bashir.
The historic port town of Suakin is no longer Sudan’s main foreign trade hub, a role which has been taken by Port Sudan, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) away along the Red Sea coast.
But there have been moves to redevelop the port.
Bashir’s government signed a deal with Turkey in 2017 to restore the historic buildings of Suakin island and expand its docks, but the agreement has been suspended since his overthrow.
Firefighters contain blaze at Sudan Red Sea port
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Firefighters contain blaze at Sudan Red Sea port
- The fire, which raged for hours, broke out in the cargo drop off area of the port
Cooper says Ethiopia visit to focus on migration
- Successive British governments have sought to address illegal immigration, an issue that has helped propel the populist campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party into a commanding lead in opinion polls
LONDON: Britain’s foreign secretary said she would use a visit to Ethiopia to focus on measures to stem the rising number of migrants from the Horn of Africa seeking to reach the UK.
Yvette Cooper said job creation partnerships would dissuade people from leaving Ethiopia, while stronger law enforcement cooperation was essential to counter smuggler gangs and speed up returns of migrants with no right to stay in Britain.
“We are working together to tackle the economic drivers of illegal migration and the criminal gangs who operate globally, profiting from trading in people,” Cooper said in a statement.
“That includes new partnerships to improve trade and create thousands of good jobs in Ethiopia so people can find a better life back home instead of making perilous journeys.”
Successive British governments have sought to address illegal immigration, an issue that has helped propel the populist campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party into a commanding lead in opinion polls.
Approximately 30 percent of people crossing the English Channel in small boats over the past two years were nationals from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan, the British Foreign Ministry said.
To boost job creation in Ethiopia, Cooper is set to sign an agreement with the country to advance two energy transmission projects led by Gridworks, a UK investment organization.
She planned to announce £17 million worth of funding for tackling violence against women and girls, assistance for 68,000 children suffering malnutrition, and for projects working with displaced people.
Meanwhile, Tigrayans in northern Ethiopia fear a return to all-out war amid reports that clashes were continuing between local and federal forces on Monday, barely three years after the last devastating conflict in the region.
The civil war of 2020-2022 between the Ethiopian government and Tigray forces killed more than 600,000 people and a peace deal known as the Pretoria Agreement has never fully resolved the tensions.
Fighting broke out again last week in a disputed area of western Tigray called Tselemt and the Afar region to the east of Tigray.
