“It took us another 20 hours on this ship from Port Sudan to Jeddah,” he said as his young daughter cried on his shoulders.

“There were many difficult moments, all of which involved fear, tension and anxiety,” said another Lebanese passenger, a woman who declined to give her name.

“We were not sleeping, eating or drinking. We lived through many difficult days.”

Fighting broke out in Sudan on April 15 between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

At least 427 people have been killed and more than 3,700 wounded, according to UN agencies.

The capital Khartoum, a city of five million, has endured “more than a week of unspeakable destruction”, Norway’s ambassador Endre Stiansen wrote on Twitter after his evacuation.

More than 4,000 people have fled the country in foreign-organised evacuations that began on Saturday.

The United States and European, Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations launched emergency missions to bring to safety their embassy staff and Sudan-based citizens by road, air and sea.

With Khartoum airport disabled after battles that left charred aircraft on the tarmac, many foreigners were airlifted from smaller airstrips to countries including Djibouti and Jordan.

US special forces swooped in with Chinook helicopters Sunday to rescue diplomats and their dependents, while Britain launched a similar rescue mission.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said more than 1,000 EU citizens had been taken out during a “long and intense weekend” involving airlift missions by France, Germany and others. A French warship was heading for Port Sudan to pick up more evacuees.

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Japan said it had evacuated 45 of its nationals and their spouses and temporarily closed its embassy in Khartoum.

The British government said it would begin evacuating its citizens from Sudan on Tuesday.

Britain said military flights would depart from an airfield outside Khartoum, and would be open to those with British passports. Priority will be given to family groups with children, the elderly and individuals with medical conditions.

“We have started contacting nationals directly and providing routes for departure out of the country,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Twitter.

But millions of Sudanese are unable to flee what is one of the world’s poorest countries, with a history of military coups.

There were acute shortages of food, clean water, medicines and fuel and limited communications and electricity, with prices skyrocketing, said deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq.

He cited reports of looting of humanitarian supplies and said “intense fighting” in Khartoum as well as in Northern, Blue Nile, North Kordofan and Darfur states was hindering relief operations.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned earlier that Sudan was on “the edge of the abyss” and that the violence “could engulf the whole region and beyond”.

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Those who reached Saudi soil on Monday said they were grateful to be out of a country where the doctors’ union has reported that “morgues are full” and “corpses litter the streets”.

Saudi Arabia announced the first successful civilian evacuation from Sudan on Saturday, welcoming 150 people including foreign diplomats and officials in Jeddah.

Earlier on Monday, a C-130 Hercules military plane flew dozens of South Korean civilians, among them a small child and a nun in a white-and-blue habit, to Jeddah’s King Abdullah Air Base.

All told, 356 people have been evacuated to the kingdom from Sudan so far – 101 Saudis and 255 foreigners from more than 20 countries, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Saudi state media has provided wall-to-wall coverage of the effort as well as statements of gratitude from countries whose nationals have benefited.

As the naval frigate approached Jeddah’s port on Monday night, the state-affiliated Al-Ekhbariya channel broadcast images of passengers waving their arms and smiling, while others recorded the scene on their smartphones.

Writing in the private newspaper Okaz, columnist Abdo Khal said Saudi Arabia’s relatively speedy organisation of evacuation planes and boats highlighted the kingdom’s “international value”.

“Definitely this shows an eagerness by the Saudi kingdom to position itself as a central actor in regional crisis situations and to take advantage of the leverage it has over both sides of this conflict,” said Umar Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham.

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But Saudi officials are coming under pressure to do more than facilitate evacuations, given their close ties to the two generals whose troops are fighting it out in and beyond Khartoum.

“Saudi Arabia is a critical player in the ceasefire diplomacy in Sudan,” Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group said.

“African and Western governments are looking to Riyadh for help in convincing Sudan’s military to give talks a chance.”

Britain requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Sudan, which was expected to take place Tuesday, according to a diplomat.

Additional reporting by Reuters