Protesters take to streets in Sudan demanding end to military rule

Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Sudan saw a wave of protests across the country Saturday against the military government that seized power earlier this week.

Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in the capital city Khartoum and elsewhere insisting that Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok be returned to power after being ousted by the military.

In Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city, the military opened fire on protesters near the parliament building killing two and leaving multiple people injured, the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors said on Twitter. The group said a dozen were injured by gunshots and others by tear gas or military vehicles.

"People here are very peaceful," Shaheen al Shaheef, a member of the Khartoum Resistance Committee, told the BBC. "These protests are going to continue being peaceful even when faced with the guns."

Waving Sudanese flags, protesters called for an end to the military coup that pulled the country off its transition toward democracy.

Led by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burnhan, the military seized power Monday and arrested Hamdok. The military also dissolved the Transitional Sovereignty Council, a caretaker government that was moving the country toward democracy after the country's autocratic President Omar al-Bashir was disposed of in April 2019.

The dissolved transitional government was marked by uneasy relations between civilian and military leaders. Al-Burnhan justified the coup saying it was needed to prevent a civil war.

President Joe Biden and the United Nations Security Council called for a return to civilian rule on Thursday. The violence comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took to Twitter to express support for "Sudan's people in their nonviolent struggle for democracy."

"Sudan's security forces must respect human rights; any violence against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable," he said.