Hundreds of Sudan professors hold anti-government sit-in at Khartoum University

Sudanese security officers surrounded the university premises to stop people from entering the college.

"Hundreds of professors and lecturers of the university succeeded in entering the headquarters of the university building to hold the sit-in," an eye witness told The New Arab.

More than 530 university staff members signed a "Khartoum University Professors' Initiative", a spokesman for the group told AFP.

It listed a series of demands that echoed those made by protesters on the streets calling for an end to Bashir's iron-fisted rule.

"More than 300 professors and lecturers of the university held a sit-in today inside the campus," Mamduh al-Hassan said.

"The main demand is that a transitional government be formed in Sudan," he added.

The University of Khartoum - the oldest university in Sudan - has often taken the lead in anti-government protests in the past.

But the current protest movement has been led by the Sudanese Professionals' Association, an umbrella group of teachers, doctors and engineers.

Separately on Wednesday, Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi, the daughter of a senior opposition leader, was arrested in her family home, her sister Rabah Sadiq al-Mahdi told Reuters.

Mariam, a medical doctor, is the deputy head of the opposition Umma Party, headed by her father Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was Sudan's last democratically-elected prime minister.

After nearly a year in exile, Mahdi returned to Sudan on 19 December, the same day as the wave of protests erupted against a government decision to triple the price of bread.

The protests have spiralled into nationwide rallies calling for an end to the three-decade-old rule of Bashir, who swept to power in 1989 in an Islamist-backed coup.

Agencies contributed to this report.

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