Coup fears as military force arrests Sudanese PM, ministers

Khartoum: Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok has been put under house arrest after an unidentified military force besieged his house early on Monday, Al Hadath TV reported citing unidentified sources.

No independent confirmation was immediately available.

They also arrested four cabinet ministers and one civilian member of the ruling Sovereign Council, the TV channel said citing unnamed sources.

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Adam Hamdok remotely addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in a pre-recorded message in September.Credit:UN Web TV/AP

Pro-military protesters briefly blocked major roads and bridges in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, amid growing tensions between the generals and the pro-democracy movement that fuelled the uprising that lead to the toppling of former president Omar al-Bashir.

The protest came a day after US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman met with military and civilian leaders in Khartoum to find a compromise to the dispute.

The souring ties between the military and civilians in the ruling government threaten Sudan’s fragile transition to democracy since the military’s ouster of Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019 after nearly three decades of autocratic rule.

Sudanese demonstrators take to the streets of the capital Khartoum last week to demand the government transition to civilian rule.Credit:AP

The current crisis surfaced with a coup attempt last month. Officials blamed Bashir loyalists for the move. But the generals lashed out at the civilian elements of the government, accusing politicians of seeking government posts rather than helping ease people’s economic suffering.

General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the head of the ruling Sovereign Council, said last week that dissolving the Hamdok government could resolve the ongoing political crisis. That suggestion was rejected by hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets of Khartoum and elsewhere in the country on Thursday.

More to come

Reuters, AP

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