Sudan student killed during university protest

A student was shot dead during clashes between Sudanese security forces and protesters at a university in the capital's twin city of Omdurman, officials have said.
Violence erupted yesterday when security forces confronted angry students who spilled out of the campus of Ahaliya university in Omdurman, which lies on the western banks of the Nile opposite Khartoum.
The protesters were demanding the release of fellow students arrested in previous demonstrations at Sudanese universities.
"Students clashed with plain-clothed policemen when they stepped out of the university gate," a protester said.
A doctor at Omdurman hospital told AFP the student was already dead when he was brought to the facility.

Late yesterday President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party said in a statement that the student was "shot dead with a pistol outside the campus".

Hundreds of students carried his body from the hospital covered in a white shroud to his home in an impoverished neighbourhood of the city, an AFP correspondent reported.
"Killing of student means killing of nation!" angry students chanted as they marched in a procession.
Riot police and plain-clothed officers were deployed around the hospital and also walked along with the procession.
Omdurman's Ahaliya university condemned the killing and ordered the institution to be closed for an indefinite period.

Yesterday's incident came a day after police used tear gas to disperse a protest at Khartoum university over what students said was a government plan -- denied by the authorities -- to sell iconic Khartoum university buildings.
Universities in Sudan have seen regular protests, with the authorities often closing the institutions to prevent unrest.