Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, writing from Khartoum on Friday, said protesters gathered in front of Al-Joda hospital, where dozens are being treated for injuries. “The protesters have been holding a sit-in for over 24 hours now,” Morgan said. “They say they will continue to vent their anger at the military and demand that they hand over power to a civilian government.” The United States and others in the international community have condemned the violence in the East African nation, which has been rocked by nearly weekly protests since an Oct. 25 coup that overturned its fragile transition to democracy. Sudan’s military authorities have met the protests with a deadly crackdown, which has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children. The Sudanese Doctors Committee, a medical group monitoring victims of the protests, said security forces shot and killed nine people, including a child, and injured 500 in or near Khartoum during Thursday’s protests. In and near Khartoum on Friday, large funeral processions were held for some of those killed the previous day, while others gathered after morning prayers at mosques in the country’s capital. Photos of the dead have been posted online, in some cases in an attempt to identify them. The protests coincided with widespread internet outages. Internet observers and activists said the government has crippled communications to prevent rallies and slow the spread of news on days when protests are expected to be large. Sudan’s leading pro-democracy groups – the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change and the Resistance Committees – had called for nationwide demonstrations against the coup. The takeover reversed the country’s short-lived transition to democracy after longtime leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted in 2019. Since the coup, the UN’s political mission in Sudan, the African Union and the eight-nation regional group of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in East Africa have been trying to find a way out of the political impasse. The talks have yielded no results so far. In a joint statement on Friday, the three bodies expressed “disappointment at the continued use of excessive force by security forces and the lack of accountability for such actions, despite repeated commitments from the authorities”. Dalia Mohammed, a former journalist in Khartoum, said it had been eight months of “direct protest” and people at Thursday’s rally were “more resilient”. “They were more adamant with their calls and what they want… which is a political rule and the army to go back to the barracks,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera. The protesters’ demands are “very clear,” he said, adding that they “never wavered from their demands.” “They want a civilian government.” Thursday’s protests also fell on the third anniversary of the 2019 rally that forced the generals to begin negotiations with pro-democracy groups and sign a power-sharing deal expected to govern Sudan during a transition period until general elections are held. The coup last October overturned that agreement. Protesters commemorated the third anniversary of the Khartoum protests [Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters] Western governments have repeatedly called on the generals to allow peaceful protests, but have also angered the protest movement for sometimes clashing with top generals. Pro-democracy leaders are calling on the generals to step down immediately. “We are devastated by the tragic loss of life in yesterday’s protests,” the US Embassy in Sudan said in a statement on Friday. “We call on all parties to resume negotiations and we call on peaceful voices to override those who support or perpetrate violence.” Police announced on Friday that they had launched an investigation after a video appeared online that appeared to show security forces prodding and kicking a badly injured protester in the street the day before. According to pro-democracy groups, the protester later died. In a statement posted on the country’s state news agency website, police said the video showed security personnel flouting orders not to approach demonstrators with firearms. He said those involved will be held accountable. The country’s interior ministry, which oversees the police, has consistently denied using live fire on protesters, despite evidence from activists and pro-democracy groups to the contrary.
