Britain has evacuated more than 300 people from Sudan on rescue flights from an airfield north of the capital, with the first group on their way to the UK from Cyprus, where flights have been stopping over. Downing Street said 301 people have been evacuated on three flights and that and a fourth was being loaded. A further four flights are expected to take off on Wednesday, but it is not clear what proportion of those rescued are British. So far, numbers of people airlifted out are a fraction of the 2,000-plus UK citizens and dual nationals estimated to be trapped in the country by fighting that broke out suddenly between the country’s military government and the Rapid Support Force (RSF) paramilitary group a fortnight ago. Britons have been told to make their own way to the Wadi Seidna airbase north of Khartoum, but there are reports of fighting between rival forces despite a 72-hour ceasefire agreed on Monday night, making the journey fraught and potentially dangerous. The UK is in temporary control of the Sudanese airfield, having taken over from Germany overnight after Berlin completed its own rescue of more than 700 diplomats and civilians from at least 30 countries. The British government is allowing other nationals with travel documents to board RAF planes if there is spare capacity, and ministers said earlier that there was not a crowd at the airport of people hoping to be evacuated as happened at Kabul 18 months ago. The UK has been criticised for lagging behind Germany and France in rescuing civilians, instead being the second country, after the US, to rescue its embassy staff on Sunday. Germany and France began rescue flights for diplomats and civilians from Sunday, with the UK starting a broader evacuation on Tuesday. Earlier on Wednesday, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said the UK was “removing, relocating British nationals” adding that the UK had to cope with a “larger cohort of British nationals in Sudan compared to other countries”. The RAF planes landed at Larnaca in Cyprus, and the first onward flight to the UK left on Wednesday shortly before 10am BST and is due to arrive at London Stansted airport in the afternoon. A fourth plane is due into Larnaca at 2.30pm local time (12.30pm BST) with potentially another five to follow. “It is the first charter to leave,” a source told the Guardian. “Three RAF planes have arrived with evacuees so far, one at 8.40pm last night, one at 3.20am this morning and one at 6.30am today.” Families with young children were among those on the first flights that landed in Cyprus, with a British man telling the BBC his sister – who left Sudan overnight – felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The first charter flight back to London was due to depart later on Wednesday. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, indicated that Germany had handed over the airstrip, with 1,000 UK military personnel involved in the rescue effort as a whole. On Tuesday, 120 Royal Marines were sent to Wadi Seidna to secure the airstrip and consular and Border Force staff sent out to process evacuees. It was not clear how many more people would be able to make it to the airport, with phone and internet communications intermittent, the banking network down and shortages of petrol as the conflict simmers, particularly in the capital, Khartoum. A UK student attempting to flee Sudan said she did not have enough petrol to make the dangerous one-hour drive from the outskirts of Khartoum to the airstrip. “I’m trying to get there. But the problem is the vehicles that we have no gas, and the petrol stations are empty,” said Samar Eltayeb, 20, from Birmingham. Wallace said only one nation could facilitate the airfield at a time. But he added there was “some risk that some of the planes are not full”, he said, as there are “not thousands at the gate” as in the evacuation from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Germany said it had evacuated diplomats and other people, with the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, saying Berlin would not leave civilians “to their own devices”. She said that, “unlike in other countries”, Germany’s evacuation had included all its nationals and not only embassy staff. The UK government is considering other options, including a possible seaborne evacuation from Port Sudan, 500 miles from the capital, particularly if the air route is closed off. Wallace said on Tuesday he had asked frigate HMS Lancaster to sail to the port city to potentially help.