KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Mobile phone lines inside Sudan were cut on Wednesday before the latest round of planned protests in the capital Khartoum against a military takeover, a Reuters witness said.
Mobile internet services in Sudan have also been suspended since the takeover on Oct. 25 despite judicial orders to restore them. This has complicated efforts by pro-democracy groups to stage a campaign of anti-military rallies, strikes and civil disobedience.
Local resistance committees across Khartoum called for protests on main roads and in neighbourhoods on Wednesday to demand a full handover to civilian authorities and call for coup leaders to be tried in court.
As on previous protest days, security forces closed bridges across the River Nile connecting Khartoum with its twin cities of Khartoum North and Omdurman.
The Sudanese Congress Party, which was part of a civilian coalition that had shared power with the military before the coup, said one of its leaders had been arrested following a raid on his house.
The coup ended a transitional partnership between the military and civilian groups that helped topple autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
On Saturday, opposition groups held the latest of three days of mass rallies against the military that have been joined by hundreds of thousands of people. Medics reported that seven people were killed by gunfire of tear gas as security forces moved to disperse the demonstrations.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Nafisa Eltahir; Writing by Aidan Lewis, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
