At left, guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG 103) departs from Aqaba, Jordan, March 12, 2023, during International Maritime Exercise 2023. At right, expeditionary sea base USS Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4) sails with expeditionary sea base USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) in the Gulf of Aden, July 26, 2022. (Aaron Troutman/U.S. Army (left); Frederick Poirier/U.S. Army (right))

WASHINGTON — The Navy is moving at least three ships to the eastern coast of Sudan in case the United States needs to evacuate American citizens caught in the middle of a bloody struggle for control of the African country, military officials said.

The USS Truxtun, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, is near Port Sudan now, and the USS Lewis B. Puller, an expeditionary mobile bases vessel, is en route to Sudan’s coast, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, said on Monday.

He said the Defense Department is assisting the State Department as needed and the ships could be used in various ways, including evacuations and medical treatment.

The Navy is also sending the USNS Brunswick, a fast transport vessel, 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Tim Hawkins said in an email Tuesday. The Brunswick has a top speed of 40 mph, the Navy’s website said.

U.S. 5th Fleet service members departed Bahrain on Tuesday morning and will join the crew of 25 civilians on the Brunswick, which is en route to the Red Sea, Hawkins said.

For more than a week, fighting has raged in parts of the Sudan between two powerful military factions that combined to overthrow the country’s previous government in 2021. Together, the two forces mounted the coup, but tensions have risen recently over power-sharing as the nation transitions to a new government.

More than 400 people have been killed since the fighting began earlier this month, according to news reports. American staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum were evacuated Sunday by U.S. special forces troops, but thousands of other American citizens are still believed to be in the country.

Ryder said the Pentagon moved U.S. forces into the region near Sudan last week, expecting an evacuation of government personnel might be imminent. He also said the U.S. military has flown unmanned aerial vehicles over Sudan to support a U.N. convoy of evacuees during its 35-hour trek from Khartoum to Port Sudan.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, conducts a news briefing at the Pentagon on April 24, 2023. (Alexander Kubitza/Department of Defense)

“That is enabling us to support State Department efforts in terms of maintaining and understanding the situation on the ground in order to, for example, look at potential land routes out of Sudan,” Ryder told reporters Monday at the Pentagon.

The United States and other countries have been moving quickly in recent days to remove their citizens from Sudan as fighting intensified. The Pentagon said U.S. forces will remain there for as long as necessary.

"In the coming days, we will continue to work with the State Department to help American citizens who may want to leave Sudan," Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity warfare, said Sunday. "One of those ways is to potentially make the overland routes out of Sudan potentially more viable. So, [we are] considering actions that may include use of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to be able to observe routes and detect threats."

Ryder said U.S. Africa Command has established a “deconfliction cell” in Germany that’s designed to maintain communications between American forces and partners in Sudan to “keep them updated in terms of what the U.S. government is doing.”

Sudan is no stranger to conflict. Hundreds of thousands of people died in two civil wars between the 1950s and the mid-2000s, and many more died in the war in Darfur from 2003 to 2020. The new fighting is a conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, mainly over integrating the RSF into the Sudanese military and who will have power. Most of the fighting has been limited to Khartoum, with sporadic clashes elsewhere. The State Department has designated Sudan with its strongest travel warning and urges American citizens against traveling there.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned in an address Monday that the violence in Sudan could spread to other parts of Africa.

“I call on the parties to stop combat operations in densely populated areas and to allow unhindered humanitarian aid operations. Civilians must be able to access food, water and other essential supplies, and evacuate from combat zones,” Guterres said. "It risks a catastrophic conflagration within Sudan, that could engulf the whole region and beyond."

Sudan is Africa’s third-largest country by area — almost 730,000 square miles — and was the continent’s largest nation before a segment broke off in 2011 and declared independence as South Sudan. A U.S. estimate last year said roughly 48 million people live in Sudan.

Stars and Stripes reporter J.P. Lawrence contributed to this report.