| 1,000 held, hundreds hurt in Sudan protests: Activists |
KHARTOUM About 1,000 people were detained and hundreds injured — many by tear gas — during anti-regime protests on Friday in Sudan, an activist group said on Saturday’s anniversary of President Omar Al Bashir’s coup.
“Some were arrested and released,” said an official from the Organisation for Defence of Rights and Freedoms.
The organisation’s figures indicate a dramatic rise in the number of arrests on Friday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation.
“The figure of those arrested before Friday was about 1,000 in the whole country,” said the official who asked not to be identified because of the tense situation.
Many are still being held in prisons or “ghost houses,” the location of which is unknown, he alleged.
“They don’t tell you where they are. You are not even allowed to ask,” he said.
One of those detained is Sudanese journalist Talal Saad, who had brought some freelance photos of the protests to the AFP bureau in Khartoum on Friday.
Armed national security agents raided the bureau, ordered AFP’s correspondent to delete the photos and took Saad away.
He has been unreachable for more than 18 hours.
The Organisation for Defence of Rights and Freedoms said “a few hundred” people were injured during protests on Friday. Many elderly people were affected by tear gas but other injuries came from rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, or beatings, the official said.
Activists had called for a major day of protest on Friday.
Agence France-Presse
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