Sudanese security forces fire tear gas canisters in an attempt to repel the thousands of opponents of military power who approach the presidential palace on Saturday, December 25.

The demonstrators brave an Internet and telephone cut-off as well as a crackdown which, in two months of putsch, has left 48 dead.

The crowd, now a few dozen meters from the palace where the transitional authorities headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, author of the coup d'état carried out on October 25, are seated, advance and retreat according to the police charges.

At each of them, new wounded are evacuated by demonstrators, noted an AFP journalist.

Barrages of tear gas canisters also await protesters who try to cross the bridges connecting its suburbs to Khartoum.

From the early hours of the day, the authorities tried to lock down the country: first, the mobile Internet network disappeared, then the telephone communications no longer worked and the demonstrators who planned to come from the various neighborhoods and suburbs to the presidential palace discovered that during the night cranes had come to deposit huge containers across the bridges over the Nile.

Nevertheless, they were again tens of thousands on Saturday in Khartoum, in its suburbs, but also in Madani, 150 kilometers south of the capital, Atbara (north) and Port Sudan (east), according to witnesses, to scold the army, its leader Burhane and even the civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok under a swarm of Sudanese flags and the ululations of demonstrators.

A last mobilization marked by live ammunition

According to witnesses, there were thousands in Khartoum and its suburbs and hundreds in Madani, a town 150 kilometers south of the capital.

Less than a week ago, for the third anniversary of the launch of the "revolution" which in 2019 forced the army to end 30 years of the military-Islamist dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, supporters of a civil power had shown that they could still mobilize. 

That day, the security forces fired live ammunition, rained tear gas canisters on the hundreds of thousands of them who took to the streets and even used, according to the UN, a weapon already used in Darfur in war: rape.

>> Read also: In Sudan, the army uses rape to intimidate demonstrators

On Saturday, the authorities resorted to another major tool: as during nearly a month after the putsch, they cut the Sudanese off from the world.

"Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and this includes full access to the Internet," UN envoy Volker Perthes has already protested, recalling that "no one should be arrested for having intended to demonstrate "while the militants report raids since Friday evening in their ranks.

Fearing a new outburst of violence, the pro-democracy doctors' union which has identified the victims of the repression since 2018 said "ask the world to watch what will happen" as activists struggle to get images out of the country via diaspora activists.

The processions must converge on the presidential palace.

But from Friday, the governorate of Khartoum warned: the security forces "will take care of those who break the law and create chaos" especially around "buildings of strategic sovereignty", while at each demonstration, the The first shots took place in front of the Parliament, the presidential palace or the army headquarters.

New event scheduled for December 30 

Apparently, after his putsch denounced by the whole world or almost, General Burhane reinstated civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, but Sudan still has no government, a sine qua non for the resumption of international aid, vital for this country, one of the poorest in the world.

In addition, he promises the first free elections for decades in July 2023, without convincing the supporters of a solely civilian power in the country, under the rule of the army almost without interruption in 65 years of independence.

They have already announced that they would demonstrate again on December 30 in Sudan, mired in political stagnation and inflation at over 300%.

With AFP

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