In the center of Khartoum, hundreds of demonstrators hostile to the power installed after the coup d’etat of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane in October tried to approach the presidential palace.
In a ballet now weekly for nine months, the security forces fired tear gas canisters to repel them, before the wave of protesters returned, as at each parade, noted AFP journalists.
These scuffles regularly degenerate into deadly violence and the repression has since October left 114 dead and thousands injured, according to pro-democracy doctors.
This mobilization day is a test. The anti-army front had launched in early July in a standoff with power the day after the bloodiest day of repression of the year – nine demonstrators killed on June 30. However, he then lifted sit-ins on his own, which he promised «unlimited» at the time of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha last week.
– Collective blood donation –
Faced with the demonstrators, the police had installed concrete blocks at dawn across the bridges linking the capital to its suburbs, as well as the main arteries leading to the army headquarters, the usual place of demonstration.
If each time portraits of the demonstrators killed are brandished, this Sunday, it is other deaths that the demonstrators have decided to honor: the 60 victims, according to the latest report from the Minister of Health of the Blue Nile, of a tribal conflict near al-Damazine, the capital of this state bordering Ethiopia.
«Al-Damazine is bleeding,» read a placard held up by a young protester in central Khartoum.
In Wad Madani, 200 kilometers further south, «the demonstrators marched towards the hospital to donate their blood», reported to AFP one of the organizers of this procession, Ammar Mohammed.
Because in the Blue Nile, as in most states of Sudan, doctors, medicines, hospital beds and equipment are sorely lacking. And with 163 injured, still according to the Minister of Health, «all first aid equipment has been exhausted», warned doctors on Saturday.
– Tribal violence, political gains –
On Sunday, according to witnesses on the spot, troops sent as reinforcements by Khartoum maintained calm in al-Damazine and its surroundings.
But for the anti-coup, the key to the tribal problem – which has caused hundreds of deaths, particularly in Darfur (west) in recent months – is in the hands of the generals and their ex-rebel allies in Khartoum who, they charge, exacerbate ethnic and tribal tensions for personal gain.
By Saturday, dozens of families — mostly women and children — had fled their homes for fear of stray bullets in al-Damazine.
«Violence is never a solution,» UNICEF responded as two children have already died of malnutrition this year in the country where, according to the UN, by September one in two Sudanese will experience hunger.
Adding to the distress of the most vulnerable, the rainy season, which began in June in the large East African country, has also taken its toll.
The authorities thus announced on Sunday that 12 people were killed on Friday and 30 houses were taken away in South Darfur. In total, according to the UN, nearly 10,000 people have been affected by the floods in at least four states in one month.