Despite warnings from international powers urging the military to exercise restraint, Sudanese security forces killed three protesters during mass anti-coup rallies on Saturday, medics said.
“The putschist military council killed two demonstrators in the city of Omdurman,” the independent Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said in a tweet, adding that one was shot in the head and the other in the stomach.
It was later reported that security forces had shot and killed a third protester, also in Omdurman, Khartoum’s sister city, bringing the total number of people killed since the anti-coup protests began on Monday to 12.
“Live rounds” were fired at protesters in Omdurman and parts of Khartoum, according to medics.
More than 100 people were also injured on Saturday, with some suffering breathing problems as a result of tear gas, according to the committee.
Sudan’s interior ministry denied on Saturday that live rounds were fired at protesters, calling the reports “inaccurate.”
According to a statement, “groups of protesters… attacked the police, as well as vital sites, prompting the police to fire tear gas.”
Other protests on the eastern banks of the Nile in Khartoum, according to an AFP correspondent, were met with tear gas.
Large numbers of security forces had been deployed, and bridges leading to Khartoum had been blocked.
The demonstrations on Saturday drew tens of thousands of people across the country, almost a week after the military dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency, and detained Sudan’s civilian leadership.
The move drew widespread condemnation from around the world, with world leaders calling for a swift return to civilian rule.
In Khartoum, protesters waving Sudanese flags chanted, “No, no to military rule.”
Organizers hoped to stage mass protests similar to those that led to Omar al-overthrow Bashir’s in 2019.
‘Don’t give up,’ says the narrator.
Many protests in Khartoum and Omdurman dwindled as night fell, according to AFP correspondents.
Witnesses and AFP correspondents said demonstrations took place across the country during the day, from Khartoum to the eastern regions of Gedaref and Kassala, as well as the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, central North Kordofan state, and southern White Nile state.
“Civilian rule is what we want… Hashim al-Tayib, a protester in southern Khartoum, stated, “It has to be 100% civilian.”
Sudan has been led by a civilian-military council since August 2019, which was supposed to last three years before transitioning to full civilian rule.
Prior to the coup, the arrangement had become increasingly strained, with analysts claiming that it was intended to maintain the army’s traditional control over the northeast African country.
With slogans such as “Don’t back down,” protesters held posters of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was deposed by the military and is effectively held under house arrest.
“Though I have reservations about Hamdok’s government’s performance, there is no substitute for it,” protester Hagar Youssef said.
Protesters in east Khartoum burned tyres and held signs that read “It’s impossible to go back,” while banners in the city’s southern district expressed concern that the country would be added to Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
That designation, which had been accompanied by years of crippling sanctions, was lifted only last December, clearing the way for debt relief and new largesse from the IMF and the World Bank.
The World Bank cut off aid to Sudan after Monday’s coup, dealing a severe blow to a country already mired in a dire economic crisis that began under Bashir.
Other demonstrators demanded “liberation for the cabinet members” who have been detained since the putsch.
Following the takeover led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto leader since the ouster of Bashir, which cost more than 250 lives, several pro-democracy activists have been arrested.
Violence-related warnings
Security forces have been urged to avoid violence and show “restraint” by officials from the United Nations, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
“Any violence against any protesters will be blamed on the security services and their leaders,” said Robert Fairweather, Britain’s special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said on Saturday that Sudan’s security was “of paramount importance” to the Gulf kingdom, and that “a Sudanese dialogue that brings all parties together” was needed.
Sudan’s information ministry, which supports a civilian government, warned ahead of the protests that coup leaders planned to engineer “incidents of destruction” to justify their excessive violence.
As part of a campaign of civil disobedience, businesses have largely closed and government employees have refused to work.
Under Bashir’s three decades of iron-fisted rule, Burhan, a senior general, has insisted that the military takeover “was not a coup” and was only meant to “correct the course of the Sudanese transition.”
Sudan has only had a few democratic periods since its independence in 1956, and has spent decades torn apart by civil war.
