Tear gas attack on students in university, Khartoum

Hundreds of students of the National University held a vigil at the campus in southern Khartoum yesterday. Security forces attacked them with tear gas in the buildings, resulting in the fainting of a number of students.

In solidarity with the hundreds of detained women in the country and following calls to protest by the Sudanese Professionals Association and other signatories of the Declaration of Freedom and Change, the students started a vigil on Thursday at the premises of the National University.

They chanted slogans calling for the immediate step-down of President Omar Al Bashir and his regime from power, and criticising the State of Emergency and the suppression of demonstrators.

Witnesses told Radio Dabanga that security forces arrived at the campus and fired tear gas into the university buildings.

A Facebook video from one of these buildings shows a person who had fainted as a result of the tear gas and how students struggle with breathing.

Witnesses and other videos on social media platforms such as Facebook showed the violence of the attacks by the security forces and the arrests of an unknown number of students. They have been taken to an unknown destination.

The Sudanese Central Doctors’ Committee condemned the attack of the security forces on the students of the National University and described it as “brutal and barbaric.

“The attack left a large number of injuries, in addition to the arrest of a large number of students,” according to a statement by the committee yesterday. It commended the “steadfastness of the students of the university in all their specialties of doctors, dentists and laboratory technicians, who continued to demonstrate peacefully”.

University students make for a sizeable portion of the popular protests against the Sudanese regime in the country. Students of the National University and El Ahfad University, among others, were active in demonstrations last week and last month.