[An Nahar] Sudanese police on Friday "attacked" with tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators gathered at mosques for weekly anti-regime protests sparked by inflation, a rights group said."Still large numbers of police forces are surrounding the central mosques," said an official of the Organization for Defense of Rights and Freedoms, representing political, media, trade union and other activists promoting human rights.
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
"It seems rubber bullets and tear gas were used," he said, adding that information was still preliminary.
One of the mosques targeted was that of the opposition Umma party in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, said the official, asking not to be named.
Video images showed dozens of people marching outside the party's Wad Nubawi mosque, chanting and calling for the regime's overthrow. Some held signs.
"We got out to the square peacefully," and then police responded, one demonstrator said.
Video showed police on pickup trucks firing tear gas, sending the crowd scattering.
Wad Nubawi was also a focus of demonstrators a week earlier, when hundreds who gathered were also confronted with tear gas and rubber bullets, witnesses said at the time.
Umma party officials could not immediately comment.
The official with the rights group said there had been arrests.
Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel told Agence La Belle France Presse that its crew was briefly locked away
Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up!
and the cameraman roughed up while reporting at Wad Nubawi.
In another district of Khartoum, an AFP news hound saw helmeted police stop to remove stones blocking a main road, a common tactic of demonstrators.
Protests against high food prices began on June 16 at the University of Khartoum.
After President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
announced austerity measures, including tax hikes and an end to cheap fuel, demonstrations spread to include a cross-section of people around the capital and in other parts of Sudan.
Friday has now become the focus of the demonstrations, which initially involved groups of 100 or 200 people daily burning tires, throwing stones and blocking roads in a call for regime change sparked by high inflation.
Opposition parties on Wednesday signed a charter to step up anti-regime protests by mobilizing their members against the current political system. Umma, led by former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, is a key member of the opposition alliance.
Bashir seized power from Mahdi, who was democratically elected, and established his Islamist regime on June 30, 1989.