KHARTOUM — Seven hundred people have been arrested during a week of the worst unrest in central Sudan in years, the government said on Monday, Sept. 30, as protests continued against President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

One week after the start of demonstrations against subsidy cuts, police once again used tear gas on protesters, this time women students at the Ahfad University in Khartoum’s twin-city of Omdurman who chanted “We don’t want Bashir,” witnesses said.

Another protest by 300 people that took place in Khartoum’s Burri district went peacefully, a witness said. “The people want to overthrow the regime,” the crowd shouted. The march was much smaller than protests in the past few days in the area.

At a news conference called by the government to put forth its side of the week’s events, Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamad said 34 people had died, far fewer than the up-to-150 estimated by Sudanese human rights activists and some diplomats.

Hamad said police had not used live ammunition against protesters who, he said, had attacked more than 40 petrol stations, 13 buses, and many private cars and government buildings.

“Most pictures on social media are actually from Egypt,” he said.

Accusing foreign media of pursuing an anti-Bashir agenda, Sudan has closed the offices of two foreign television news channels: Saudi-owned al-Arabiya and Sky News Arabia, an off-shoot of Britain’s Sky News, based in Abu Dhabi.

Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman accused al-Arabiya of trying to bring an “Arab Spring” to Sudan by misreporting the protests.