HUGE protests have erupted against the rising cost of living in several Sudanese towns, with crowds torching the office of the ruling National Congress Party in the northern city of Atbara.

Riots broke out in Port Sudan on the Red Sea as well as in Barbar and Nohoud yesterday. Video clips released today appeared to show police and security forces passively watching the protests rather than taking action to crush them. Previous demonstrations have met with savage police violence.

Some attributed the uprisings to yesterday’s return to Sudan of former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was ousted by current President Omar al-Bashir in a military coup in 1989 that saw trade unions, opposition parties and all “non-religious institutions” banned. Mr Mahdi had returned from a year’s exile in Egypt.

But issues raised by the protesters focused on the rising price of bread. Unrest has also been building over President Bashir’s role in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, where Sudanese troops have been sent to fight the country’s Houthi movement under the command of officers from Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Sudanese journalists have reported cases of mutinies by Sudanese soldiers who complain of unpaid wages and being used as cannon-fodder by Saudi commanders.

In return for the assistance the UAE has helped Sudan to launder “blood gold” from sensitive areas such as Darfur on international markets, with reports emerging of violence as troops open up new goldfields.

The Sudanese Communist Party, among the largest opposition parties in the country, said the protests showed the masses were “expressing their refusal to live under arbitrary rule.

“The masses in Atbara, Shendi, Madani, Kosti, Damazin and the outskirts of the capital condemn the budget of hunger and poverty and demand their full rights.”

It called on cadres to organise resistance in “places of residence, work and study” and to “co-ordinate protest activity in all cities. Let us build a broad front to bring down the regime, dismantle it, liquidate it.”