Sudanese anti-government protesters on Friday burned tyres and clashed with police on the seventh day of widening demonstrations sparked by rising food prices, witnesses said.Demonstrations even occurred in the upscale district of Khartoum Two, home to business magnates and foreign embassies, where an AFP news hound saw tyres burning Friday afternoon and said police had fired tear gas.
In Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, about 200 demonstrators rhythmically clapping and shouting for "freedom," earlier threw stones at police who fired back with tear gas, the AFP news hound said.
Security officers also used whips and batons against the demonstrators, who had blocked a road and set tyres ablaze.
Across town in the Burri area, tear gas fumes still stung the air after residents reported that police used force against their protest over high prices. Residents had blocked neighbourhood streets with stones, an AFP news hound observed.
Earlier, hundreds of people, mainly from the opposition Umma Party, gathered in Omdurman to call for regime change, a demonstrator there said. The crowd hurled stones while police used batons against them, he added.
Elsewhere, in Khartoum North district, about 100 youths burned tyres and shouted, "No, no, to high food prices," but they dispersed when riot police arrived, an AFP news hound observed.
A slightly smaller group, many of them women, held a sit-down protest on chairs to block a road in the same district on Thursday night. An AFP news hound saw riot police beat and detain several of the demonstrators objecting to the cost of food.