University students staged anti-regime protests in Khartoum for the fifth straight day on Wednesday, with Sudanese riot police using tear gas and batons to disperse them, witnesses said.The demonstrations, which began on Saturday and have spread to different parts of the capital, come amid a rapidly deteriorating economic situation that has forced the government to make drastic spending cuts and driven up the cost of living.
Groups of students gathered in streets around the University of Khartoum, located next to the Blue Nile river in the city centre, shouting slogans such as "Khartoum, rise up! rise up!" and "The people want to change the regime!"
Riot police responded by firing tear gas to scatter them, while one witness said plain-clothes men carrying sticks and whips, and some wearing masks, had closed the street in front of the main university campus.
At a private business college nearby, riot police again used tear gas and batons against student protesters, thought to number about 100, who were trying to close off a main street in the centre of the capital.
In Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city, hundreds more demonstrated outside Ahlia University, as they had on Monday, denouncing the sharp rise in food prices and calling for regime change, witnesses told AFP.