Sharjah24 – AFP: Sudanese security forces deployed in large numbers Sunday, setting up road blocks in the capital Khartoum amid calls for pro-democracy rallies in "memory of the martyrs" killed in recent protests.
Communications including internet and phone lines have been severely restricted, while armed officers blocked key bridges across the Nile river connecting Khartoum to its suburbs.
Web monitoring group NetBlocks said mobile internet services were cut from mid-morning ahead of the planned protests, the first of the year.
Activists use the internet for organising demonstrations and broadcasting live footage of the rallies.
Activists have kept up a more than two-month-long campaign of street demonstrations against the army's takeover, despite a crackdown that has seen at least 53 people killed and hundreds injured in protest-related violence, according to the pro-democracy Doctors' Committee group.
Those rallies have been repeatedly broken up by security forces firing rounds of tear gas, as well as charges by police wielding batons and shooting bullets into the air.
On Thursday, five people were shot dead in Khartoum when security forces cracked down on mass rallies that saw tens of thousands take to the streets chanting "no to military rule".
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