The Sudanese Police begin to disperse the massive protest in Khartoum with tear gas

The number of deaths in this week’s inter-community clashes in the Blue Nile rises to 65

July 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Sudanese Police is firing tear gas against the crowd gathered this Sunday in Khartoum to demand, once again, the departure from power of the military regime and the creation of a civilian government in the country after the coup d’état carried out by the Army in October from last year.

This new protest takes place at a particularly tense moment for the country due to violence between communities in the Blue Nile state, which has left more than 65 dead and 192 injured this week, according to the region’s Minister of Health. of the Blue Nile, Jamal Naser Al Sayed, speaking to the Sudanese newspaper ‘Al Sudani’.

The clashes that took place from Monday to Friday between the Berti and Hausa communities, in the municipality of Qissan, over the possession of some land, have left a total of approximately 1,800 displaced persons divided into nearly 120 families who are now refugees in the Armed Forces training camp in Damazin, the state capital, added the minister.

Qissan, and in general the entire state, has been the scene of conflict since 1986. There, the guerrillas have been a serious problem for the authorities for decades, both for the deposed dictator Omar Hassan Al Bashir, and for the military junta that right now controls the country.

Faced with this situation, the United States Embassy declared its “concern” this Sunday and called for dialogue between the parties, according to a tweet from the Embassy’s charge d’affaires, Lucy Tamlin, collected by the Raokbanews portal. Also the Security and Defense Council of the coup military junta is holding a meeting this afternoon to address the situation, according to Al Jazeera sources.

This meeting takes place in the midst of the massive protest that is running through the streets of Khartoum at the call of the opposition represented in the Sudan Resistance Committees, which. They hope to gather more than a million people to demand that the military allow once and for all the organization of a civilian government after years of disputes after the revolution that ended the dictatorship of Al Bashir in 2019.

In a statement collected by the ‘Sudan Ajbar’ portal, the committees assure that they have no intention “neither to legitimize nor to recognize the military component that governs the country”, hence the call for this new concentration under the slogan “Sudan is a single country”, who intends to address the Presidential Palace.

According to witnesses on the website, the central area of ​​Khartoum, where the palace and several strategic facilities such as the Army General Command are located, are now full of soldiers, and the authorities have closed the bridges that connect the capital with the sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North to prevent protesters from reaching the vicinity.

The repression of the security forces against the protests that began in October last year, when the military, led by Abdelfatá al-Burhan, definitively assumed power, have already left more than a hundred dead, nine of them in a suppressed demonstration with particular virulence at the end of last month.