It isn’t always easy to get rid of spies. Members of the Sudanese Directorate of the General Intelligence Service (known as the NISS) have been offered money to leave the service and go into retirement. The NISS is more like a private army than an intelligence service and some of its members clearly did not like the offer they were given. Some of them came out onto the streets at two of their bases – in Riyadh and Khartoum – they erected barricades and started firing on the public. Two people are reported as killed with an unknown number injured.
The reason that the NISS members think that they can act this way is because they were instrumental in the removal from power of former President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. There are even rumours that this may be the start of another coup. Sudanese troops and tanks are reported to have surrounded the bases to prevent any further trouble.