- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, Jun 5 - Sudan's military council said Wednesday the ruling generals are ready to resume negotiations with the opposition, after three days of a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left 60 dead across the country.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The head of the council, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, said there would be "no restrictions" in talks with the leaders behind the months-long street protests.
"We open our hands to negotiations with all parties ... for the interest of the nation," Burhan said, adding that those responsible for the violent beak-up of the demonstrators' sit-in in the capital, Khartoum, would be held accountable.
There was no immediate reaction from the protest movement.
The motives for Burhan's about-face — if sincere — were not immediately clear. Burhan had earlier cut the negotiations and canceled all agreed-on points between the military and the Forces for Declaration of Freedom and Change, an alliance which represents the protesters.
Meanwhile, the death toll in the military's violent crackdown on protesters reached 60 on Wednesday, organizers said.
The mounting casualties are the latest challenge to the protest movement, which now aims to show it can keep up pressure in the streets after its central rallying point — the weeks-long sit-in outside the military headquarters in Khartoum — was wiped out on Monday.
In April, the movement succeeded in forcing the military to remove Sudan's longtime strongman, Omar al-Bashir. It then kept its sit-in going, demanding that the generals who took power hand over authority to civilians.
The last previously reported death toll stood at 40 but the Sudan Doctors Committee said security forces killed at least 10 people on Wednesday in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman. That came after another 10 people were killed on Tuesday, including five in the White Nile state, three in Omdurman and two in Khartoum's Bahri neighborhood.
The doctors' committee is the medical arm of the Sudanese Professionals Association, which has been spearheading protests against army rule. The medical group also said that at least 326 people were wounded in clashes in the past two days. The group said it feared the final death toll would be much higher.
Activists Mohammed Najib and Hashim al-Sudani said there were street battles late Tuesday and early Wednesday in Khartoum's Bahri and Buri districts between protesters and security forces, mainly from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
Source: AP
Your Comment