Sudan’s government said former intelligence chief Salah Abdalla Gosh was behind heavy gunfire in the capital on Tuesday at two bases of the country’s security agency.
Shooting broke out at the General Intelligence Service bases in the Riyadh district, not far from Khartoum airport, and in Khartoum North.
Shortly after the gunfire began, the security agency announced that there was gunfire as officers of the country's National Intelligence and Security Service rejected financial compensation offered as part of a restructuring plan proposed by the transitional government.
Video posted on social media showed heavy deployment of security forces in some areas of Khartoum city after clashes broke out between military forces.
At a press conference in Juba this afternoon, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, Deputy Head of the Transitional Sovereign Council said the former director general of National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) was behind the incident.
“Salah Gosh is behind the plot and there are many active and retired military officers supporting him,” he said.
Daglo – widely regarded as Sudan's most powerful military leader – accused some members of the former regime of Omar al-Bashir of trying to destabilize the country.
The top official says security forces have controlled the armed protest from within the security apparatus. He advised rebellious forces to hand over their guns. “I want to assure the public that the situation has been controlled,” he said.
“There are no negotiations with those forces, they have been given some time to surrender their weapons," he added.
Ghosh had worked on and off for the national security agency since the 1989 coup that brought Omar al-Bashir to power. He was later arrested on accusations that he had planned a coup to overthrow Bashir, but no evidence was found against him and the government pardoned him.
Gosh resigned from his position in April last year two days after the ouster of Omar Bashir by the military. He is now outside of Sudan.