KHARTOUM: Sudanese security forces fired tear gas Friday at hundreds of protesters who rallied for a second day in a row in the capital against last year’s military coup, witnesses said.
Demonstrators massed again near the presidential palace in Khartoum a day after at least nine people were killed during mass rallies against the military takeover led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan last October.
“The people want to bring down Burhan,” activists chanted while others, carrying photos of people killed in protest-related violence, yelled: “We call for retribution!“
The death toll from protest-related violence has reached 113 since the coup, with the latest fatality reported Friday after a protester died from wounds sustained at a June 24 protest, according to pro-democracy medics.
Sudan’s police meanwhile accused protesters of wounding 96 police and 129 military officers, “some critically,” on Thursday, as well as damaging vehicles and setting fires.
Thursday’s crackdown defied calls by the international community urging Sudanese authorities to refrain from violence.
The “violence needs to end,” demanded UN special representative Volker Perthes.
US senior diplomat Lucy Tamlyn said she was “deeply concerned” by the reported protester deaths and the “use of live fire by authorities and aggression against medical professionals.”
Last year’s coup plunged Sudan into deepening turmoil which has seen rising consumer prices and life-threatening food shortages and sparked near-weekly protests as well as ethnic clashes.
The United Nations, African Union and regional bloc IGAD have tried to facilitate talks between the generals and civilians, but they have been boycotted by the main civilian factions.
On Friday, the three bodies jointly condemned the violence and “the use of excessive force by security forces and lack of accountability for such actions, despite repeated commitments by authorities.”
The protests Thursday came on the anniversary of a 1989 coup that toppled Sudan’s last elected civilian government and ushered in three decades of iron-fisted rule by Islamist-backed General Omar Al-Bashir.
It was also the anniversary of 2019 protests demanding that the generals who had ousted Bashir in a palace coup earlier that year cede power to civilians.
Those protests led to the formation of the civilian-military transitional government that was toppled in last year’s coup.
Tear gas fired as Sudan anti-coup protests flare again
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Tear gas fired as Sudan anti-coup protests flare again
- Sudan’s police meanwhile accused protesters of wounding 96 police and 129 military officers
- The “violence needs to end,” demanded UN special representative Volker Perthes
US Senate candidates in Texas make final pitches to voters
- Democrats, hungry to win a Senate race for the first time since 1988, see an opening, but have their own knotty race to figure out
SAN ANTONIO: A heated US Senate race in Texas entered its final stretch on Sunday with candidates on both sides of the aisle making final pitches to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the nation’s first big contest of the 2026 midterm elections.
Incumbent Republican US Sen. John Cornyn is trying to avoid being the first Republican senator from Texas to lose a primary, fighting challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and US Rep. Wesley Hunt.
HIGHLIGHT
Despite his long career in Texas politics, Paxton has painted himself as a Washington outsider and a staunch supporter of Trump.
Democrats, hungry to win a Senate race for the first time since 1988, see an opening, but have their own knotty race to figure out.
US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the rhetorical brawler and regular antagonist for President Donald Trump, is stressing her federal experience and is scheduled to meet voters in the Dallas area with Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
Crockett was endorsed on Friday by former Vice President Kamala Harris.
State Rep. James Talarico, a softspoken seminarian who emphasizes his crossover appeal to Republicans, was set to hold a rally in San Antonio as part of a final tour that he describes as a movement.
But Cornyn’s precarious stature as an incumbent vulnerable in his own party’s primary has been the focus of a majority of the massive sums spent by both sides in the run up to Mar. 3.
“Complacency is a killer,” Cornyn told voters on Saturday at a seafood restaurant in The Woodlands, a Houston suburb. “It kills relationships. It kills careers.”
Senate Republican leaders in Washington, working to hold their thin majority, have worried out loud for months that Democrats could have a shot at a long out-of-reach Texas seat, if Republicans nominate Paxton, who is popular with MAGA voters but has had years of legal problems.
