Khartoum sit-in massacre: death toll rises to 35+

At least 35 people are now known to have died as a result of attacks by paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and security forces on the sit-in in front of the army command in Khartoum and protestors in Omdurman on Monday, according the Sudan Doctors Central Committee.

Members of the RSF, Sudan’s main militia, backed by a large presence of security forces, violently dispersed the people at the sit-in in the early hours of Monday morning. They torched the tents at the sit-in and brutally assaulted the protestors.

They ordered the men and women at the sit-in to lay on the ground. They beat protestors with whips. They shaved the heads of a number of protestors with razors and forced some of them to drink sewage water.

Bodies in the Nile

Witnesses told Radio Dabanga that the bodies of a number of young protestors who were killed at the sit-in site were thrown into the Nile and some bodies have begun to float on the surface of the river.

The Sudan Doctors Central Committee said that the forces that carried out the attack against the demonstrators imposed a siege on the Royal Care Hospital, El Mualim Hospital and the clinic of University of Khartoum, prevented the wounded and medical personnel from reaching them.

On Monday morning, the medical director of the Royal Care Hospital in Khartoum urgently appealed to all doctors, specialists and all available medical personnel to immediately go to the hospital to treat the wounded and the injured, describing the situation as unspeakable.

Activists talk through social media about large number of casualties and dead, while a doctor who called Radio Dabanga sought aid because RSF troops threatened to storm the hospital and kill the protestors who are inside.

Negotiations suspended

In separate statements, the TMC and the AFC announced that they were suspending all political negotiations. The chairman of the TMC, Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, has called for snap elections within nine months.

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