Sudan arrests paramilitaries for pupils' killing amid new deaths

KHARTOUM: Sudan's ruling generals announced Friday that nine paramilitaries had been arrested for the killing of four teenage demonstrators earlier this week after four people were killed protesting their deaths.

The move against the feared paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces came as talks between protest leaders and the ruling generals on a promised transition to civilian rule were due to enter a second day.

"An investigation has been launched into the incident of Al-Obeid and seven members of the RSF were immediately dismissed and handed over to civilian judges for trial," General Shamseddine Kabbashi, spokesman for the ruling military council, told reporters.

"Yesterday (Thursday), two more RSF members were arrested, so a total of nine have been detained." The fatal shooting of the four schoolchildren and two other demonstrators during a rally against fuel and bread shortages in the city of Al-Obeid on Monday has sparked angry protests in cities across Sudan.

On Thursday, four protesters were shot dead in the capital´s twin city of Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, doctors said. The protest movement has long blamed the irregulars of the powerful RSF, whose commander General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo is deputy head of the ruling military council, for the deadly violence against demonstrators.

But after Monday's shooting, a fellow member of the military council, General Jamal Omar, too blamed the paramilitaries, who sprang out of the Janjaweed militia notorious for alleged war crimes during the conflict in Darfur.

Speaking to Egypt's Al-Ghad television and other media during a tour of Al-Obeid, Omar said RSF fighters guarding a nearby bank had initially used batons to try to stop the protesters gathering.