2 Die in Riots in Sudan Over Higher Prices

At least two people were killed by riot police and more than 100 others were arrested Wednesday in riots over price boosts that engulfed Khartoum hours after President Jaafar Numeiri left for the United States and a meeting next week with President Reagan.

Several thousand students, some shouting anti-American and anti-Numeiri slogans, marched from the People’s Friendship Palace on the banks of the Nile River to the city center to protest price increases for gasoline, bread and other commodities.

Mobs of students smashed car windshields, looted shops and erected burning blockades of debris in city streets, witnesses said. Some of the damaged vehicles belonged to the U.S. Embassy, sources in Khartoum said.

Residents said order was restored by late afternoon, but smoke from fires set by rioters still hung over parts of the capital.

Reports from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum said there were at least two dead in the rioting. Diplomats said more than 100 of the rioters were arrested.

Diplomats said most of the demonstrators were students from the University of Khartoum and the Islamic University at Omdurman across the river from Khartoum.

A State Department spokesman in Washington said embassy personal were taking “appropriate security measures” in light of the violence. Diplomats said the protests were sparked by Numeiri’s phase-out of price subsidies during the last two weeks.

On Monday, he announced the cancellation of all subsidies for foodstuffs and textiles in connection with a demand by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to open Sudan’s government-controlled economy to free enterprise and a free market system.

Bread prices rose 30%, while the cost of gasoline jumped 66%.

Sudan, an East African nation one-quarter the size of the United States, is suffering from a harsh famine.