THE head of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council (TMC) announced today that negotiations with the civilian-led opposition were over and called for elections in nine months.

In a televised address this morning General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said: “The military council decides on the following: cancelling what was agreed on and stopping negotiating with the Alliance for Freedom and Change, and to call for general elections within a period not exceeding nine months.”

Meanwhile the TMC, which came to power after ousting former president Omar al-Bashir following months of popular protest, continued its brutal crackdown on dissents today.

“In the early hours of dawn, blood was shed in the area by the army headquarters sit-in,” the online activist group Sudanese Translators for Change tweeted this morning.

“Tents were burnt and the corpses of young protesters were being thrown from over the bridge into the River Nile.” 

Footage emerged on social media in the morning showing protesters in the capital Khartoum setting up barricades against further expected attacks from the TMC’s forces. 

Hours later hundreds of paramilitary vehicles were photographed tearing down the makeshift blockades.

The bloodbath began yesterday when the TMC sent out the Rapid Support Forces  — a paramilitary group linked to the Janjaweed militias responsible for genocide during the Darfur conflict — to disperse the protesters from their sit-in protest camp outside the army’s Khartoum headquarters.

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), an umbrella group of doctors and lawyers’ associations, trade unions and opposition groups, called for “an escalation of the revolution” today.  

The SPA urged protesters to begin “an all-out political strike” and campaign of “civil disobedience” until “the regime is overthrown.” 

The SPA confirmed it would no longer participate in negotiations with TMC which it now refers to as the “coup council.”

“The coup council is no longer fit to negotiate with regarding the future of the Sudanese people,” it said in a statement. 

“The leaders and members of the council are all held responsible for the blood that was shed since April 11 2019, and they shall be brought before competent courts in Sudan once the revolution is victorious.”

The Democratic Alliance of Lawyers, which forms part of the SPA, took aim at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates today, demanding they “lift their hands from Sudan and stop supporting the Military Council and consolidating the pillars of its rule with the aim of preserving it and protecting their own interests that are harmful to the Sudanese state and its citizens.”