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The deaths occurred in clashes in different parts of the capital, according to the relatives and medical workers. Numerous plumes of black smoke rose into the skies above Khartoum.
“The people want the fall of the regime!” protesters chanted, echoing the trademark chant of the “Arab Spring” demonstrations. “No, no to high prices!”
Mobs set fire to a university building and several petrol stations in Khartoum. They blocked a main road to the airport near the luxury Rotana hotel, used by diplomats and businessmen, and torched several cars in the parking lot, witnesses said.
A Reuters reporter saw police fire volleys of teargas grenades into one crowd, while hundreds of officers and plainclothes security agents armed with guns or batons rushed to the city centre. Others were sitting on the roof of government buildings. Agents detained some 20 protesters, who were driven away in pickup trucks.
NUMEROUS PROTESTS
There was no immediate comment from the government on the unrest, and police could not be reached for comment.
Many of Wednesday’s protests around the capital mustered only a few dozen or at most a few hundred people and dispersed after a short time, making it hard to get an exact idea of how many had joined. But the total number in Khartoum was likely to have been in the thousands, and there were also demonstrations in the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan.
Similar protests broke out in June last year after the government reduced fuel subsidies as part of a plan to contain its ballooning deficit, but they ended in the face of a security crackdown and Sudan’s intense summer heat.
Bashir said on Sunday night that remaining subsidies would be lifted, but did not give details or a timeline. The next morning, fuel prices shot up.
The roots of Sudan’s economic crisis lie in the secession of South Sudan in July 2011. The new nation took about three-quarters of Sudan’s oil output, the lifeblood of its economy.
Crude exports were the government’s main source of income and of the foreign currency it needs to import food and other goods for its 32 million people. Inflation soared and the pound lost over half its value against the dollar on the black market.
POUND FALLING
On Wednesday, the dollar bought about 8.2 Sudanese pounds on the black market, compared to about 7.3 pounds last week before the government announced it would cut fuel subsidies.
Khartoum had hoped to maintain some subsidies by boosting gold exports to replace oil revenues, but has been undermined by a recent fall in global gold prices.
The government says annual inflation eased to 23.8 percent in July from 37.1 percent in May, but independent analysts put the actual rate at 50 percent or even higher.
Two people were killed during protests in the Khartoum area on Tuesday, relatives who named the victims told Reuters.
Police have confirmed only one death that day, saying a robber killed an unnamed man. Activists blamed government forces.
It remains to be seen whether the most recent round of protests will gather momentum or fizzle out like previous bouts of unrest in the last two years.
Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989, has weathered multiple armed insurgencies, years of crippling U.S. trade sanctions and a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court.
Sudan’s opposition parties, run by older men, are weak and divided, and have little appeal for young people demanding drastic improvements in living standards and political change.
