Sudan Has Arrested 700 in Week of Anti-Government Unrest

Claims it's targeting vandals, not protesters

Seven hundred people have been arrested during a week of the worst unrest in central Sudan in years, the government said on Monday, as protests continued against President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

One week on from the start of demonstrations against subsidy cuts, police once again used teargas on protesters, this time women students at the Ahfad university in Khartoum's twin-city of Omdurman who chanted "We don't want Bashir", witnesses said.

At a news conference called by the government to put its side of the week's events, Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamad said 34 people had died, far fewer than the up-to-150 estimated by Sudanese human rights activists and some diplomats.