On Sunday, the aircraft carrying medical aid took off from Jordan and landed in the city of Port Sudan, said the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The U.S., which had none of its officials on the ground for the evacuation, has been criticized by families of trapped Americans for initially ruling out any U.S.-run evacuation for Americans who wish to leave.

The civilian death toll jumped Saturday to 411 people, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties.

The mayhem in the Darfur city of Genena pointed to how the rival generals’ fight for control in the capital, Khartoum, was spiraling into violence in other parts of Sudan.

Witnesses say crowds of families have been growing at Sudan’s border crossing with Egypt and at a main port, desperately trying to escape their country’s violence.

So far, a series of short cease-fires the past week have either failed outright or brought only intermittent lulls in the fighting that has raged between the forces of the country’s 2 top generals since April 15.

For many Sudanese, the airlift is a terrifying sign that international powers only expect a worsening of the fighting that has already pushed the population into disaster.

On Sunday, the country experienced a “near-total collapse” of internet connection and phone lines nationwide, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring service.