by the head of the government, Abdallah Khalil. The First Sudanese Civil War broke out in a series of actions in the south in late 1963 and early 1964. Attacks on police posts and convoys began in September 1963, and the higher-profile early attack on the Armed Forces came in January 1964, when rebels attacked the barracks at Wau, Sudan. President Abboud was forced to step down following demonstrations which began in mid-1964. During 1969 the Sudanese Army consisted of about 26,500 men, four infantry brigades of four battalions each, three independent infantry battalions, one armoured regiment, a parachute regiment, an armoured regiment and three artillery regiments. After independence, British advisers helped train the Army and Air Force, and British equipment predominated in the ground forces. There were 50 Alvis Saladins, 60 Ferret armoured cars, and 45 Commando armoured cars, about 50 25-pounders, 40 105-mm howitzers, 20 120-mm mortars, and 80 Bofors 40-mm guns. On May 25, 1969, several young officers, led by Colonel Jaafar Nimeiry, seized power, thus bringing the army into political control for the second time. From 1969 until 1971, a military government - the National Revolutionary Command Council, composed of nine young officers and one civilian - exercised authority over a largely civilian cabinet. The council represented only a faction within the military establishment. From 1971 Nimeiri led a more civilian-based government. The first civil war ended in a negotiated settlement in 1973 by General Ismail. Sudan sent a brigade with infantry and supporting elements to the Sinai peninsula as a reinforcement to the Egyptian forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It arrived too late, on October 28, 1973 and saw no fighting. Diplomatic and military relations with Britain and other Western nations were broken after the June 1967 Arab–Israeli War, and the breach was filled by close military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Soviet assistance coincided with a dramatic expansion in Sudan Armed Forces personnel from 18,000 in 1966 to nearly 50,000 by 1972. The bulk of the equipment used by the ground and air forces throughout the 1970s until the early 1980s was of Soviet manufacture, including tanks, artillery, and MiG combat aircraft. The Second Sudanese Civil War broke out again in 1982 and continued until 2005. The Armed Forces operated under the authority of the People's Armed Forces Act 1986. Al-Bashir era By the time of the coup in 1989, over fifty