Four school children among six shot dead in Sudan

AL-OBEID: Four schoolchildren were among six protesters shot dead at a rally this week in Sudan, a doctor at a hospital that received the casualties said Wednesday, after five pupils were reported killed.

Six people were killed and more than 60 wounded at the demonstration in Al-Obeid on Monday, the country’s protest movement and witnesses said, reporting at the time that five of them were school children.

But doctor Ameer Adam, a member of the team of medics who received the casualties at Al-Obeid hospital, confirmed to AFP that only four were students, aged between 15 and 17.

“The confusion must have happened because the fifth protester who was killed had been wearing a uniform. His age was more than 18,” Adam said.

AFP spoke to two families of those killed along with the four school students. They confirmed that their relatives who were killed were aged 23 and 55.

The younger man was dressed in the uniform of a pharmacy institute where he was a student, his family said.

Monday’s killings triggered new demonstrations in Al-Obeid and also in the capital Khartoum, where crowds of school children took to the streets to denounce the deaths.

The Al-Obeid rally was to protest weeks of shortages of bread and fuel.

It was the sudden tripling of bread prices in December that sparked the mushrooming protests that led to the toppling of longtime president Omar al-Bashir by the army in April.