Sudan’s ruling military council foiled a coup attempt, a top general on Thursday announced on state TV, saying that 12 officers and four soldiers had been arrested.
The announcement came after the ruling military and civilian protesters last week agreed to end a political impasse after the army in April ousted former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir on the back of a popular uprising.
“Officers and soldiers from the army and [the Sudanese] National Intelligence and Security Service, some of them retired, were trying to carry out a coup,” General Jamal Omar of the ruling military council said in a statement broadcast live on state TV.
“The regular forces were able to foil the attempt,” he said, but did not say when the attempt was made.
Of the 12 officers arrested, five of them were retired, Omar said, adding that security forces were looking for the mastermind of the attempted coup.
“This is an attempt to block the agreement, which has been reached by the Transitional Military Council and the Alliance for Freedom and Change that aims to open the road for Sudanese people to achieve their demands,” Omar said.
The announcement came as the generals and protest leaders went through the details of the agreement at a luxury hotel in Khartoum.
The two sides held intense discussions through the night into the early hours yesterday, and later agreed to continue today, mediators told reporters.
The landmark agreement that aims to form a new joint transitional civilian-military ruling body was reached last week after mediation by African Union and Ethiopian envoys.
The forming of the new governing body is the first step toward installing an overall transitional civilian administration in Sudan as demanded by demonstrators.
Sudan has been rocked by a political crisis since protests first erupted against al-Bashir’s rule in December last year.
The protests finally led to the army ousting him on April 11, but the generals who seized power have so far resisted demonstrators’ demands to hand it over to a civilian administration.
Tension had further soared between the two sides after a brutal June 3 raid on a long-standing protest camp outside army headquarters in Khartoum that killed dozens of demonstrators and wounded hundreds.
The raid came after talks between the generals and protest leaders collapsed in May over who should lead the new governing body — a civilian or soldier.
Intense mediation finally led to the agreement reached on the new joint governing body on Friday last week.
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