Khartoum, SUDAN
Sudan’s protest leaders earlier this week called for night-time
demonstrations and marches in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the
country, amid a tense standoff with the ruling military over who should lead
the transition after the ouster of the autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
The protest leaders said they’ve
begun a “revolutionary escalation” to pressure the country’s generals to hand
over power to civilians and to condemn the military’s violent dispersal of
their sit-in camp in Khartoum earlier this month.
At least 128 people have died since
the security force’s crackdown on June 3, according to the protest organizers.
The military-backed authorities, however, say 61 people died, including three
members of the security forces.
The group representing the protesters
— known as the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change — said the
night rallies begun on Tuesday and marches on Thursday.
A Sudanese delegation on Friday
arrived in neighbouring Eritrea for a working visit, the Eritrean Information
Minister disclosed on Friday.
The delegation is led by Chairman of
the Transitional Military Council, TMC; Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan. They were
received by President Isaias Afwerki at the Asmara International Airport.
The two sides have since talks which
are likely to center around bilateral relations and incidents back in
post-Bashir Sudan.
Eritrea has in recent weeks been a
vocal neighbour calling on the African Union to stop externalizing the crisis
and then Afwerki’s visit to Egypt to hold talks on Sudan with Egyptian
counterpart Abdel Fatteh Al-Sisi.
Eritrea was the only country in the
region that the TMC leader had yet to visit in the last few months.
Al-Burhan has already been to Egypt, South Sudan and Ethiopia holding talks with
the respective leaders.
Back home, despite the resumption of
talks between the junta and protest leaders; the call for a third party is the
latest stumbling block to the talks. Protesters are also demanding a probe into
deaths from a violent break up of a sit-in. - AP
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