Protests rock Sudanese cities, one more dead

Reuters-Protests raged across Sudanese cities on Thursday (January 24) and another demonstrator died in the most widespread rallies of anti-government unrest that began last month. The 24-year-old man died from his wounds in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, where crowds were railing against 

Sudan

's three-decade ruler Omar al-Bashir. That took the official death toll from unrest from December 19 to 29, a government investigatory committee spokesman, Amer Mohamed Ibrahim, said. Rights groups put the total at more than 40. In Khartoum, security forces fired tear gas at protesters in various neighbourhoods, witnesses said. At night, smoke wafted over Khartoum, fires burned and the main street was blocked. Triggered by a worsening economic crisis, protests calling for Bashir to step down have spread into the most sustained challenge yet to his rule.