Twenty-one Croatian citizens of the 100 in war-torn Sudan have requested to be evacuated from the African state and the process will be conducted via the French and Croatian embassies in Cairo, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic Radman said on Sunday.

Nineteen of the 21 citizens have dual citizenship and the other two have only Croatian citizenship, the minister told Croatian Radio about the citizens who asked for help to leave Sudan, where a clash between the regular army and paramilitaries has left thousands of foreigners stranded.

The evacuation is being coordinated via the French and Croatian embassies in Cairo, Grlic Radman said.

Numerous governments are investing efforts to evacuate their own and other countries’ citizens if possible.

Fighting began in the capital of Khartoum and other parts of Sudan on 15 April and more than 400 people have been killed and nearly 4,000 wounded to date.

Some evacuations are being attempted via Port Sudan on the Red Sea, which is 650 km northeast of Khartoum or 800 km by road.