KHARTOUM - Anti-government protests erupted across Khartoum where Sudanese took to the streets after Friday prayers in the most widespread demonstrations yet against spending cuts unveiled this week. The demonstrations, now in their sixth day, expanded beyond the core of student activists and spread into several neighbourhoods of the capital that had so far been quiet. Activists have been trying to use public frustration to build a movement to topple the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The smell of teargas hung in the air and broken rocks covered streets as riot police and demonstrators faced off throughout the city, witnesses said. Demonstrators burned tyres and security forces used batons to disperse them. Large demonstrations have been relatively rare in Sudan, which avoided the "Arab Spring" protest movements in Egypt and Libya. Security forces usually quickly disperse protests. Spending cuts and food prices have been the main impetus for the protests, but activists say they also share a wider set of complaints with Arab Spring protesters including corruption, police impunity and restrictions on media and other freedoms. The government, already fighting armed insurgencies in its western Darfur region and in two southern border states, has played down the protests. The potency of street demonstrations runs deep in public consciousness in Sudan, where popular protests toppled military rulers in 1964 and 1985, uprisings known as the October and April Revolutions. The country has faced soaring inflation since South Sudan seceded a year ago - taking with it about three quarters of the country's oil production. Protesters raced back and forth down dirt roads as police pursued them in large blue trucks and on foot, Reuters television footage showed. Numbers were hard to verify as pockets of hundreds of protesters swirled and dispersed in the capital, but may have totalled in the thousands throughout the day. About 400 to 500 protesters chanted "the people want to overthrow the regime" as they left the Imam Abdel Rahman mosque in the suburb of Omdurman, activists and two witnesses said. As security forces gathered, the protesters called for the police to join them, chanting: "Oh police, oh police, how much is your salary and how much is a pound of sugar?" The police fired teargas and then used batons as they clashed with the protesters, who threw rocks back at them. Witnesses said men in civilian clothes also attacked the demonstrators. In a rare acknowledgement of the protests, police said they had contained "limited" demonstrations in Khartoum which did not exceed 150 people. The protesters "damaged one of the police cars which compelled the police to use teargas to disperse the demonstrators without any injuries occurring among the citizens or the police," they said in a statement. The protests have gone almost entirely unmentioned in Sudanese media. Several local television channels broadcast musical concerts on Friday evening. Unlike previous days, when the demonstrations were led largely by students, the protesters on Friday appeared to encompass a broader segment of the capital's population. At one protest in Omdurman, about 100 people chanted "Freedom, freedom" until police fired teargas to disperse them. Police also fired teargas to break up separate protests of a similar size in the central neighbourhoods of Burri, Khartoum Three and Al-Daim, which had previously been quiet, witnesses said. Demonstrations even touched the upscale Riyad and Amarat districts.
