Occupy Sudan: Sudanese Demonstrate in Central Sudan Against oil Subsidy Removal

A demonstrator was killed in central Sudan’s second largest city of Wad Medani, south of Khartoum, where intermittent demonstrations continued for at least two days against government’s decision to remove oil subsidies.

The police Press Bureau of the Ministry of Interior, on Tuesday, said a civilian was killed during rioting against hikes in prices in Wad Medani, capital of the Sudanese central Gezira State, but it stressed that the man was killed by a bullet fired from a passing civilian vehicle.

In a press statement it issued in Khartoum, the Bureau said protestors on Monday night threw stones at passers-by motorcars in Awoodhah neighborhood in Wad Medani, in the process, a bullet was fired from a pick-up vehicle that was being stoned by the demonstrators, hit Ahmed Mohamed Ali (23) and killed him immediately.

The statement, carried by the official news agency SUNA, Tuesday, said the car drove away fast and the Police took the legal measures and are still searching for the perpetrator.

Meanwhile, an independent daily newspaper, Al Ayam, reporting from Medani, said intermittent demonstrations have been going on over the past two days in Wad Medani on a wide scale with the protestors, partially torched a gas station, a TV station, the electricity building and two vehicles.

It explained that city dwellers were enraged when they found out that the public transport vehicles were scarce and the fares were high in addition to soaring prices of essential commodities.

It quoted acting Gezira State Governor and Information Minister Mohamed Kamil Fadul as blaming whom he identified as “groups of homeless” for the riots in which he said the rioters destroyed the fronts of a number of banks, gas stations and the electricity building.

He said no political motives were behind the acts of sabotage the damage of which he described as slight.

The Council of Ministers on Monday approved the economic reforms programme which, inter alia, provided for raising the prices of a benzene gallon from 12.5 (about US$ 1.7 in black market rate of exchange) to 21 Sudanese pounds (about US$ 2.8 in the black market rate of exchange) and gas oil from 8 Sudanese pounds (about US$ 1.07) to 14 pounds (US$ 1.86) a gallon.