Sudan’s Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamed speaks during a news conference in Khartoum yesterday.


AFP/Khartoum


Sudan pointed to “fake” victim photos and foreign interference yesterday as it defended a deadly crackdown on protesters, which drew fresh criticism from inside the ruling party as rallies continued.
With reporters complaining of stepped-up censorship, numerous videos and photographs purporting to show bloodied victims have circulated on YouTube, Facebook and other social media since the demonstrations began eight days ago, sparked by a rise in fuel prices.
“Most of the pictures on social media websites are from Egypt,” Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamed told a news conference.
Authorities say 34 people have died since petrol and diesel prices jumped more than 60% on September 23, sending thousands into the streets in the worst urban unrest in the history of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s 24-year reign. Activists and international human rights groups said at least 50 people were gunned down, most of them in the greater Khartoum area.
The real toll was difficult to determine but “could be as much as 200”, a foreign diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
In Egypt, hundreds of people have been killed since the army overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi on July 3.
As protests intensified last week, users reported the Internet went down for one day.
Foreign journalists have also experienced unexplained mobile phone disruptions.
Khartoum governor Abdel Rahman al-Khidir told the news conference alongside Hamed that police only opened fire to defend their stations.
Hamed said “criminal” attacks—separate from the peaceful protests—had been launched on police facilities and petrol stations.
“We know that overseas foundations are supporting these criminal activities,” he said, adding that about 700 people have now been arrested.
“They used the same tactics that the Darfur rebels are using in Darfur,” where a decade-long insurgency has raged.
Analyst Magdi El Gizouli has dismissed as “nonsense” government suggestions of rebel links to protests in the impoverished country, where people have endured two years of soaring prices.
A witness to one shooting recounted yesterday how plainclothes security officers in a pick-up truck suddenly drove up to a protest in the greater Khartoum area.
An officer quickly opened fire with a handgun, wounding one demonstrator before their truck fled the scene, the witness said.
Eight days after demonstrations began in a rural area south of the capital, rallies continued yesterday.  Police fired teargas into the campus of Ahfad University for Women, where between 150 and 200 students were demonstrating “against the government and things like that”, university president Gasim Badri said.
He said police did not enter the campus in Khartoum’s twin city Omdurman but lobbed teargas from outside.
In the town of Atbara north of the capital, police used teargas against about 400 demonstrators, witnesses there said.
A senior official in Sudan’s ruling party spoke out against the “unnecessary” deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters, saying the government should have instead encouraged dialogue.
“The fact that so many have died points to the degree of violence,” the official said on condition of anonymity, in comments that reflect divisions within the governing National Congress Party (NCP).
“I believe it was unnecessary to repress the peaceful demonstrators. Peaceful demonstration is a constitutional right.”
Solutions to the economy and other challenges “can’t be done by a limited number of people within the NCP, the government”, he said.