Police used tear gas against protesters who threw stones, burned tyres and blocked roads. In West Darfur, a student demonstrator was killed.

A junior interior minister warned that destructive protests would be dealt with forcefully.

The authorities have seized all copies of a number of newspapers which criticised the price rises.

Unrest over a cut in fuel subsidies in Sudan in 2013 led to weeks of disturbances in which the government acknowledged that more than 80 people were killed.

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Source: BBC

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The violence in the Western Lakes region has also seen more than 200 people injured, local MP Dharuai Mabor Teny added.

Despite clashes being relatively common, the toll from the latest outbreak is shocking, reports the BBC’s Ferdinand Omondi from Nairobi.

It has prompted President Salva Kiir to declare a state of emergency.

The order affects three northern states, with military chiefs told to mobilise forces with enough equipment for up to three months.

Mr Kiir also authorised the army to use force if armed civilians did not lay down their weapons peacefully.

The violence involves armed youths from two rival Dinka sub-clans, who first clashed on 6 December.

“Right now, from both sides, we have 170 plus people who lost their lives. 342 houses have been burnt and almost 1,800 people displaced,” Mr Teny told Reuters news agency.

A presidential spokesman said they hoped the state of emergency would help “curb the violence”.

It comes as the United Nations, which has deployed its own troops to help remove roadblocks put in by the two sides to enable trade to continue flowing, sends in a team on a five day mission to assess the human rights situation in the country.

South Sudan, the world’s newest state, became independent in 2011 after breaking away from Sudan.

It has been hit by numerous ethnic and political conflicts since then.

Mediation efforts by the African Union and foreign governments have failed to bring about peace.

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Source: BBC

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The gathering was raided by morality police on Wednesday.

The women could face punishment of 40 lashes and a fine for wearing what is described as an obscene outfit.

Rights activists say tens of thousands of women are arrested and flogged for indecency every year, and laws can be applied arbitrarily.

They say the law in Muslim-majority Sudan against wearing trousers and short or tight skirts discriminates against Christians.

Traditionally, women in Sudan wear loose flowing robes.

Campaigner Amira Osman told Netherlands-based Radio Dabanga the public order act violated women’s rights.

“The party took place in a closed hall in a building in El Mamoura [south of Khartoum],” she said.

“The girls were arrested for wearing trousers, despite obtaining a permit from the authorities.”

The law – Article 152 of the Criminal Code – applies to “indecent acts” in public, wearing an “obscene outfit” or “causing an annoyance to public feelings”.

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Source: BBC

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Dr Tom Catena, 53, a Catholic missionary from New York, received the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

He has worked in Sudan for more than 10 years, during the ongoing war between the government and rebel fighters.

In his speech he urged the international community to help solve a dispute blocking humanitarian relief.

Dr Catena is the only permanent doctor in the Nuba Mountains, where fighting between President Omar al-Bashir’s government and rebels from the Sudanese

He has been praised for overcoming problems caused by outdated or missing medical equipment at the Mother of Mercy Catholic Hospital in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, all while dealing with victims of bombing.

“The Sudanese Government is embroiled in a disagreement with rebels over who delivers aid,” Dr Catena said.

“We have to inject a bit of common sense.”

Dr Catena told people attending the awards ceremony the state wants to control the passage of supplies.

“Opponents believe medicine delivered by the regime will sterilise their women and want goods from foreign donors conveyed from neighbouring South Sudan instead.”

He has been working in Sudan since 2007, treating shrapnel wounds, delivering babies and amputating limbs.

The doctor was handed his award by actor George Clooney, who said: “We all have a role in addressing these global challenges. We all have a responsibility, each of us individually.

“We have to be engaged.”

Other finalists for the award included a dentist who did his first operation on a victim of the Syria war by sending photos to more experienced doctors abroad, on social media.

Muhammad Darwish, 26, was one of only three medics left in Madaya, which was under siege.

“That conversation will stay with me forever,” he said.

“To be in a position where you have to let someone without proper training operate on your son, and for me to take up that responsibility of opening up a living, breathing man on the table, it just should not have to happen.”

The procedure was a success.

Fartuun Adan, a human rights worker based in Mogadishu, Somalia, was another finalist.

Her husband was killed in 1996 by warlords and since then she has worked to rehabilitate child soldiers.

She also established the first ever rape crisis centre in Mogadishu.

Finalist Jamila Afghani from Kabul has campaigned for religious leaders to engage on women’s rights.

She said: “When you educate a woman, you educate an entire family. Their learnings are shared.”

Meanwhile Dr Denis Mukwege, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has helped care for more than 50,000 survivors of sexual violence in a country named the rape capital of the world.

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Source: BBC

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Amnesty International say the children are among more than 200 people estimated to have been killed by the banned weapons since January.

Those affected by the “poisonous smoke” vomit blood, struggle to breathe and watch as their skin falls off.

The Sudanese government has said the allegations are baseless.

“The allegations of use of chemical weapons by Sudanese Armed Forces is baseless and fabricated,” Sudan’s UN Ambassador Omer Dahab Fadl Mohamed said, quoted by Reuters.

“The ultimate objective of such wild accusation, is to steer confusion in the ongoing processes aimed at deepening peace and stability and enhancing economic development and social cohesion in Sudan.”

The government in Khartoum and rebels have been fighting in Darfur for 13 years.

Yet the conflict and its toll on the western region’s citizens has fallen off the radar since 2004, when warnings of a potential genocide forced the outside world to act.

But a new report into repeated attacks by the Sudanese government against their own people reveals “nothing has changed”, according to Tirana Hassan, Amnesty’s director of crisis research.

‘Brutality’

The human rights group’s eight-month investigation uncovered “scorched earth, mass rapes, killings and bombs” in Jebel Marra, a remote region of Darfur.

Researchers also found 56 witnesses to the alleged use of chemical weapons on at least 30 occasions by Sudanese forces, who launched an offensive against the Sudan Liberation Army, led by Abdul Wahid (SLA/AW) in the middle of January.

“The scale and brutality of these attacks is hard to put into words,” said Ms Hassan. “The images and videos we have seen in the course of our research are truly shocking; in one a young child is screaming with pain before dying; many photos show young children covered in lesions and blisters. Some were unable to breathe and vomiting blood.”

Survivors told Amnesty International of the putrid and “unnatural” smelling smoke which filled the air after the bombs were dropped.

Many began vomiting within minutes of coming into contact with it. Often, the vomiting and diarrhoea would be bloody, while others were left with “bulging” eyes.

Survivors’ eyes were also reported to change colour, as did their urine and their skin, which would then harden and fall off.

A man named Ismail, who tried to help people in late January, told Amnesty: “Their skin was falling off and their bodies had become rotten… and their breath was very bad”.

Several of the children he treated died, others were still in pain months later.

Two independent chemical weapons experts agreed the injuries seen were consistent with a chemical attack, with symptoms pointing to vesicant or blister agents.

Amnesty is now calling for an investigation, and for governments to apply pressure on Khartoum, in particular to allow humanitarian agencies access to Darfur’s remote populations.

Ms Hassan said: “The fact that Sudan’s government is now repeatedly using these weapons against their own people simply cannot be ignored and demands action.

“This suspected use of chemical weapons represents not only a new low in the catalogue of crimes under international law by the Sudanese military against civilians in Darfur, but also a new level of hubris by the government towards the international community.”

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Source: BBC

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