'I want to leave Sudan but France has my passport'

A number of Sudanese citizens are unable to escape fighting in their country because their passports are locked inside European embassies.

The BBC has spoken to several people whose passports were being processed for European entry visas when war broke out.

Western diplomats evacuated without giving the passports back and now the embassies are closed.

The French and Spanish embassies have not responded to requests for comment.

Rami Badawi, 29, told the BBC he was stranded in Khartoum because the French embassy refused to return his passport. Mr Badawi works at the Sudan offices of a French technology company. His passport was at the embassy because he was applying for a visa for a business trip to France.

"I want to leave but I can't," he said.

Mr Badawi contacted the French embassy after the fighting broke out, asking if he could come and collect his passport. But he says they did not reply to his emails.

"They started their evacuation and left without any communication."

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday evening he said he was angry and afraid: "I can hear the sound of guns from morning till night".

His mother, father, and siblings have their passports and they planned to travel by bus to Egypt. They faced the agonising decision of whether to leave without him, but the whole family decided to stay in Khartoum rather than leave him there alone.

The main available routes out of Sudan are currently to take a bus to the northern border and cross into Egypt, or to travel to the coastal city of Port Sudan and take a boat across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Thousands of people have also fled to neighbouring Chad, which is struggling to provide people with food, water or accommodation.

Mohamed Elfadil, 30, told the BBC he had been planning a holiday to Spain and was waiting for his visa when the war broke out.

He says when he phoned the emergency number for the Spanish embassy in Khartoum to ask for his passport back, "the woman who answered asked me 'are you Sudanese or Spanish?' When I told her I was Sudanese she hung up immediately".

Mr Elfadil has left Khartoum and reached northern Sudan but says he will be separated from his family, who plan to cross the border to Egypt without him. "I am the only one of my family who cannot travel."

"We are praying for the passport office to open, but the main passport centre is in Khartoum, and it is not functioning due to the war," he says.

"I had no response, no feedback, nothing from the Spanish embassy. My passport is very valuable, I need it to escape from this war. And what hurts the most is that I never got any replies."

Another man, who asked not to be named, said he felt "less of a human" after the Spanish diplomats evacuated themselves and their citizens without replying to his requests to return his passport. He told the BBC he managed to cross the border into Ethiopia using an old passport that had expired two years ago - but that was just luck.

Neither the French nor the Spanish embassies in Sudan have responded to the BBC's requests for comment.

The Embassy of Sweden in Khartoum is also accused of failing to return passports before they evacuated their staff.

Ahmed Mahmoud is a 35-year-old filmmaker who is currently in Port Sudan, having escaped Khartoum two days ago. He told the BBC he had applied for a visa to take part in a Swedish film festival.

"When the war started the embassy staff just up and left without any regard to my passport," he complained. On the day the fighting started he contacted the embassy and said he no longer wanted the visa, and asked for his passport back.

"They said they would look into it. I called them every day, and then at the end of the week the Swedish embassy evacuated. I was told there is no way you can get your passport."

Mr Mahmoud said he fears for his safety. "If this war carries on, I will need to leave immediately. It is going to be very bad for people like me, for civil society, artists - it will be like what [President Abdul Fattah] al-Sisi did in Egypt."

He added that his wife has her passport "and so if she wants to leave, I cannot go with her."

Once he gets a new passport, he says he would travel to Kenya, Uganda or Ethiopia, because he can get a visa on arrival at the border or airport.

Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs said: "The embassy staff have been evacuated, and the embassy will continue its operations from Stockholm. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs cannot comment in detail on the security measures that the embassy has taken ahead of the relocation as this would defeat the point of those measures."