Soldiers arrested most of the members of Sudan’s cabinet and a large number of pro-government party leaders on Monday in an apparent military coup, three political sources said.
The Information Ministry said “joint military forces” had arrested civilian members of the Sovereign Council and members of the government and had taken them to an undisclosed location.
The ministry said Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok had been placed under house arrest in what it called a military coup.
It said the internet had been cut off and military forces closed bridges. The country’s state news channel played patriotic traditional music and scenes of the Nile river. The Umma Party, the largest political party, described the arrests as an attempted coup, and called on people to take to the streets in resistance, the AP reported. Earlier, the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, a group leading demands for a transition to democracy, issued a similar call.
“We urge the masses to go out on the streets and occupy them, close all roads with barricades, stage a general labour strike, and not to cooperate with the putschists and use civil disobedience to confront them,” the group said in a statement on Facebook.
There was no immediate comment from the military.
A Reuters witness saw joint forces from the military and from the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces stationed in the streets of Khartoum, restricting civilian movements, as protesters carrying the national flag burnt tires in different parts of the city.
Khartoum airport was shut and international flights were suspended, according to Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV channel.
As tensions built this month, a coalition of rebel groups and political parties aligned themselves with the military and called on it to dissolve the civilian government, staging a sit-in outside the presidential palace.
Two officials who requested anonymity told the AP the detained included Industry Minister Ibrahim al-Sheikh, Information Minister Hamza Baloul, Mohammed al-Fiky Suliman, member of the ruling Sovereign Council, and Faisal Mohammed Saleh, a media adviser to the Prime Minister.
Ayman Khalid, governor of the state containing the capital, Khartoum, was also arrested, according to his office’s official Facebook page.
NetBlocks, a group which tracks disruptions across the internet, said it had seen a “significant disruption” to both fixed-line and mobile internet connections across the country.
“Metrics corroborate user reports network disruptions appearing consistent with an internet shutdown,” the advocacy group said. “The disruption is likely to limit the free flow of information online and news coverage of incidents on the ground.”
The arrests come after US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman met with military and civilian leaders in Khartoum on the weekend to find a compromise to the dispute.
Sudan has been on edge since a failed coup plot last month unleashed bitter recriminations between military and civilian groups meant to be sharing power following the 2019 ouster of former leader Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir was toppled and jailed after months of street protests. A political transition agreed after his ouster has allowed Sudan to emerge from its isolation under three decades of rule by Bashir and was meant to lead to elections by the end of 2023.
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.
Several cabinet ministers took part in big protests last week against the prospect of military rule.
Burhan has previously asserted his commitment to the transition.
