TWO Sudanese protesters were shot dead and dozens more suffered bullet wounds as thousands demonstrated in Sudan’s capital against last month’s coup.
One of those killed was shot in the head and the other in the neck, a pro-democracy doctors’ union said, also reporting ‘dozens of gunshot wounds,’ some of them serious.
‘The coup forces are using live bullets extensively in separate areas of the capital injuring dozens and some are in critical condition,’ the Central Doctors Committee added.
Several rallies broke out across Khartoum, even though telephone lines were cut and internet services have been disrupted since the October 25 putsch.
Before the march, security forces closed bridges across the River Nile connecting Khartoum with its twin cities of Khartoum North and Omdurman.
The Sudanese Congress Party, which was part of a civilian coalition that had shared power with the military before the coup, said one of its leaders had been arrested following a raid on his house.
On Saturday, oppositio
n groups held the latest of three days of mass rallies against the military that have been joined by hundreds of thousands of people. Medics reported that eight people were killed by gunfire or tear gas as security forces moved to disperse the demonstrations.
Blinken on tri-nation tour in Africa
The renewed protests came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Africans to watch out for rising threats to democracy as he began a three-nation tour of the continent in Kenya.
‘We have seen over the last decade or so what some call a democratic recession,’ Blinken said in Nairobi.
The United States has suspended some $700 million in assistance to Sudan in response to the coup, which halted a democratic transition that followed the 2019 toppling of longtime dictator Omar al Bashir.
Top general Abdel Fattah al Burhan declared a state of emergency, ousted the government and detained the civilian leadership.
The army’s power grab has derailed a transition to full civilian rule and sparked international condemnation.
Burhan insists the military’s move ‘was not a coup’ but a push to ‘rectify the course of the transition.’
