Breaking: Sudan prime minister detained in apparent military coup NAIROBI — The apparent detention by Sudan’s military of the country’s pri...
Breaking: Sudan prime minister detained in apparent military coup
NAIROBI — The apparent detention by Sudan’s military of the country’s prime minister and a large number of his cabinet and party members early Monday morning plunged the country’s fragile democratic transition into disarray.
Just days earlier, the capital Khartoum was swept by the biggest pro-democracy street protests since 2019, when longtime dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir was toppled by a wave of popular discontent.
Internet services were disrupted or unavailable in Khartoum and other parts of the vast northeast African country, according to phone calls with locals in Monday’s early-morning hours. Later in the morning, calls were not going through. Local news channels reported the closing of roads and bridges connecting Khartoum with the rest of Sudan by large contingents of security forces as well as the suspension of flights at the airport.
Since Bashir’s ousting, the country has been governed by a hybrid civilian-military transitional council, and tensions over power-sharing have repeatedly threatened to boil over into outright confrontation. The civilian side of the government, led by former economist Abdalla Hamdok, had recently set a Nov. 17 deadline for a full transition to civilian power and elections were meant to be held by the end of 2023.
In a statement posted on the Information Ministry’s Facebook page, Hamdok was quoted as calling on the Sudanese people to peacefully “occupy the streets to defend their revolution.” A separate post said Hamdok had been arrested and transferred to an unknown location.
The military has not commented on the arrests.
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