Sharjah24 – Reuters: Sudanese pro-democracy groups on Sunday launched two days of civil disobedience and strikes in protest against last month's military coup, although participation appeared to be limited by interruptions to internet and phone connections.
In a sign of the potential for the coup to unravel efforts to end decades of internal conflict, armed rebel factions that signed a peace deal last year rejected the coup and called for the ending of a state of emergency.
The commander of the powerful Rapid Support Forces, who is the No. 2 man in Sudan's military, came out in support of the takeover in a midnight speech posted on Facebook.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's moves "came to correct the course of the people's revolution, and preserve the security and stability of the country," said General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, Burhan's deputy on the now-dissolved Sovereign Council.
Local resistance committees and the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which led demonstrations in an uprising that toppled long-serving autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019, are organising a campaign of protests and barricades to try to reverse the military takeover.
People were out on the streets on Sunday in the centre of the capital, Khartoum, although there was less traffic than usual, residents said.
A teachers union said security forces used tear gas at the Education Ministry building for Khartoum State to break up a sit-in staged to oppose any handover to military appointees. Some 87 people were arrested, it said.
In several areas in eastern Khartoum, across the river in the Ombada area of Omdurman, police also used tear gas to break up protests, witnesses said. On one major Khartoum street, security forces in civilian clothing were seen alongside police, they said.
There were protests too in the cities of Medani, Nyala and Atbara, where hundreds protested the reappointment of Bashir loyalists in local government, witnesses said.
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