U.S. Embassy starts evacuation from Eritrea’s capital

Craig Nelson

Sunday, May 21, 2000 | 12:24 p.m.

ASMARA, Eritrea - The United States evacuated part of its embassy staff and scores of other foreigners from Asmara on Sunday, with Ethiopia claiming to have taken control of territory just 60 miles from Eritrea's capital.

A chartered DC-10 took off for Frankfurt, Germany with 206 evacuees, including 14 U.S. Embassy workers and dependents, and aid workers, teachers and others. Expatriates from Canada, Britain and Denmark had signed up to join the U.S. State Department-ordered evacuation of nonessential embassy staff.

The United States directed the partial embassy evacuation in the face of Ethiopia's now nine-day-old offensive, which it launched to try to force an end to the two-year-old border war between the two impoverished countries.

Trucks loaded with Eritrean soldiers rushed out of Asmara for the front as foreigners gathered before dawn for the flight out.

Tears rolled down the cheeks of Barbara Heywood, a teacher from Manchester, England, as she told of saying goodbye to her students on Saturday.

Many of Heywood's students were headed to the front lines or to fields to replace their fathers and older brothers.

"It's sad to know that when we come back, some of our students will be dead," she said.

The State Department directed the partial evacuation late Friday, citing deteriorating security. It is the third time since the Ethiopian-Eritrean war erupted in May 1998 that nonessential staff have been withdrawn from the embassy.

There are roughly 300 U.S. citizens and green-card holders in Eritrea.

Because of U.S. influence internationally, the decision has an impact far beyond the number of evacuees. Relief agencies feared it would trigger an exodus of aid workers, imperiling desperately needed aid projects and - with hundreds of thousands of hungry Eritreans fleeing the fighting - further endangering lives.

Western diplomats were apprehensive that other governments would follow Washington's suit, deepening the sense of international isolation Eritrea has repeatedly expressed since Ethiopia invaded on May 12.

Germany and the Netherlands have encouraged their citizens to leave, and Germany has readied contingency plans to evacuate its embassy.

There were no indications Ethiopia intended to advance into the capital itself. Ethiopia said earlier its goal was to "dismantle" the Eritrean army, secure territory around the two countries' disputed border and withdraw.

Ethiopia said late Saturday it had bombed two Eritrean military sites, one for the second day, and taken control of a town near Eritrea's border with Sudan.

Fighting has subsided on other fronts, Ethiopian said then.

Thousands more refugees crossed into Sudan on Sunday from areas of western Sudan behind the Ethiopian advance, said Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

A total of 20,000 Eritreans are believed to have sought refuge in Sudan in recent days, Stromberg said. Confusion about just where safety lay and a key road reportedly cut between the border and the Ethiopian-seized city of Barentu may be keeping more refugees from crossing, he said.

More than a half-million Eritreans are believed to have been uprooted by the new fighting.