Sudan Moves Thousands From Capital in Response to Riots

Police and troops loaded thousands of people into trucks and took them out of the capital Friday in a tough official response to three days of riots over hikes in food prices.

Rioting began Tuesday, the day before President Jafaar Numeiri left for the United States, where he is to discuss with President Reagan and other U.S. officials possible steps to restore Sudan’s shattered economy.

The disturbances followed steep price increases for bread, gasoline and other commodities caused by austerity measures Numeiri took under pressure from the United States and other international creditors.

Sources who spoke on condition they not be identified said Friday that more than 2,000 people were detained in the government’s announced plan to rid Khartoum of large numbers of unemployed and restless Sudanese suspected of joining in the riots.

‘Squatters’ Removed

Babiker Ali al-Thom, governor of Khartoum province, told Egypt’s Middle East News Agency that “several thousand squatters and people of unknown identity were removed . . . as a prelude to deporting them to production sites in various provinces.”

He said that tens of thousands of “alien elements” had entered the capital from remote areas and neighboring countries.

Reporters saw vagrants being loaded onto flat-bed trucks Friday.

Numeiri’s government and Westerners in Khartoum say the student-led demonstrations gained momentum from vagrants and from activists in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, target of a recent crackdown by Numeiri.

Courts Try Rioters

The government Security Department announced Thursday it had set up courts to try the rioters. The official news agency quoted security officials as saying more than 300 people had been sentenced to prison terms or flogging by late Thursday.

“Security authorities are in full control of the situation,” the agency reported Friday.

Green-clad paratroopers patrolled Friday outside the U.S. Embassy, where scores of marchers were turned away Thursday by police using tear gas.

Police and soldiers guarded airline offices, government ministries, gasoline stations, markets and university campuses, sites of the student demonstrations that sparked the rioting.

Burned-out shells of cars littered the streets, and there were holes where windows had been in the Meridien Hotel, the Faisal Islamic Bank and other buildings.