Renesys Corp., a company that maps the pathways of the Internet, said it could not confirm whether the blackout was government-orchestrated. But the outage recalls a similarly dramatic outage in Egypt, Sudan's neighbor, when authorities shut off Internet access during that country's 2011 uprising.
"It's either a government-directed thing or some very catastrophic technological failure that just happens to coincide with violent riots happening in the city," said senior analyst Doug Madory. He said it was almost a "total blackout."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was alarmed by the reports of what seemed like an official attempt to stifle coverage, and called on the government to restore the country's connection.
In Khartoum, meanwhile, Sudanese security forces fired tear gas to disperse dozens of protesters who demonstrated and torched a cop shoppe in the north of the capital.
At least two people have died in three days of rioting over the lifting of fuel subsidies. Officials condemn the protests as acts of sabotage, describing them as "premeditated."
Wednesday's protests took place in several areas of Kadro district, 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the capital's city center, where protesters blocked roads using lengths of pipe and burning tires. They also attacked a cop shoppe.
The riots that began in the state of Gezira, south of Khartoum, have turned into a call for the ouster of 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.
, who has ruled the country for more than two decades. The rioting started after Sudan's government decided to lift the subsidies, immediately doubling prices of gasoline and fuel.
The semiofficial Sudan Media Center on Wednesday quoted Gezira governor Al-Zubair Bashir Taha as saying that aside from cop shoppes, riots there targeted power and gas stations, banks, shops and private property. Police are tracking down the "saboteurs," he said.
A day earlier, his deputy, Mohammed al-Kamil Fadallah said the civilians killed in violence in the regional capital of Wad Medani were a student and a bus driver in their early 20s.
The SMC also quoted the deputy head of the Sudanese parliament, Samiya Ahmed Mohammed, as saying she hopes the "opposition understands the measures with objectivity."
Sudan lost most of its main oil-producing territory when South Sudan broke off as an independent state in 2011.
An initial attempt by the government to cut subsidies sparked similar protests but they were quelled by a heavy crackdown on protesters, activists and journalists.