In Sudan, Protesters Clash With the Riot Police KHARTOUM, Sudan - Antigovernment protesters in greater Khartoum and other Sudanese cities clashed with riot police officers on Friday after prayers in a third week of protest. "Revolution is the choice of the people; Freedom, Peace and Justice!" and "The people want to bring down the regime!" the protesters chanted as they left the Imam Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi Mosque in Omdurman, Khartoum's sister city across the Nile. But the crowd, of about 500 people, was driven back by tear gas while trying to move to a nearby field. Plainclothes security officers arrested some of them. An elderly man looked on in dismay, shaking his head and asking, "Why?" Many of the protesters ran back into the mosque courtyard, where they felt trapped. "The area is surrounded, we can't leave!" said Faruq al-Badawi, 60, via phone from inside the mosque, which he said was surrounded by heavy security. Activists had termed the day Vagabonds Friday, a taunt directed at President Omar al-Bashir, who had described the protesters in a speech as "agitators" and "vagabonds" Activists on social media have reported protests in nearby Khartoum North, and other Sudanese cities including Kosti, Sinnar, New Halfa and Dongola. A spokesman for the Khartoum State Police, Al-Sir Ahmad Umar, denied that protests were widespread. "There was a protest at the mosque in Omdurman, and it was contained," he said. The situation is secure. Some of the journalists covering the events of the day were arrested but soon released, including the crews from Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera English. The recent wave of protests in Sudan began on June 16, when students at the University of Khartoum objected to government austerity measures, including ending subsidies for gasoline. The numbers have remained in the hundreds, but have been gaining momentum. An alliance of political opposition parties, the National Consensus Forces, threw its support behind the protest movement late Wednesday, issuing a document called the "Democratic Alternative Charter" and calling for "masses-based peaceful political struggle in all its forms (strikes, peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, civil disobedience, uprising and all means of popular revolution) to overthrow the regime." The current protests in Sudan remain relatively small and scattered, and most analysts see the political opposition as weak. In its modern history, however, Sudan has overthrown military governments by popular protest: in 1964 and in 1985. Protests in early 2011, in the midst of the region's Arab Spring, were crushed.