Sudanese protest leaders on Wednesday turned down an offer by the ruling military council for talks and demanded justice for a crackdown that doctors said has left 108 people dead.
Security forces moved in to brutally disperse a protest sit-in on Monday.
The Rapid Support Forces, paramilitaries said by rights groups to have their origins in the Janjaweed militias accused of abuses during the 16-year-old conflict in Darfur, are thought to have been largely behind the crackdown.
The Central Committee for Sudanese Doctors close to the protest movement said on Wednesday that at least 108 people had been killed in the crackdown, including 40 whose bodies were recovered from the Nile, and more than 500 wounded.
Sudan has been controlled by a military council since it ousted veteran president Omar al-Bashir in April after protesters demanded an end to his authoritarian rule before agreeing a three-year transition period to a civilian administration.
But army ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said following the crackdown that the agreement had been ditched and an election would take place within nine months — a plan rejected by demonstrators.
On Wednesday, however, Burhan said those in “the military council open our arms to negotiate with no restriction”, an offer that the protest leaders were quick to reject.
“The Sudanese people are not open for talks,” said Amjad Farid, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) which spearheaded protests that led to the ouster of Bashir.
“The Sudanese people are not open to this TMC (Transitional Military Council) that kills people and we need justice and accountability before talks about any political process,” he told AFP.
Farid said both the SPA and umbrella protest group the Alliance for Freedom and Change would “continue using all non-violent tools and civil disobedience in resisting the TMC”.
The rejection came after the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces accused of carrying out the deadly crackdown insisted the country would not be allowed to slip into “chaos”.
“We will not allow chaos… we must impose the authority of the state through law,” Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy chief of the military council, told his forces in a televised address.
Hospitals in Khartoum said they were struggling to cope with the number of wounded after security forces on Monday raided a weeks-long sit-in outside army headquarters.
“The situation is very difficult. Most of the hospitals have taken in more casualties than they have capacity for,” a doctor who works at two hospitals in the city told AFP.
“There’s a shortage of medical staff, a shortage of blood,” said the doctor, who asked not to be named.
“Among the wounded there are still people in a serious condition and I expect the number of deaths to rise.”
The African Union’s Peace and Security Council voted on Thursday to suspend Sudan from all AU activities until a civilian government has been formed.
The council made the announcement after a meeting in Addis Ababa of the member states of the pan-continental body.
The United Nations said late Wednesday it was relocating some of its staff away from Khartoum, while Britain warned its citizens against all but essential travel and decided to pull non-essential staff from its embassy.
A push for the UN Security Council to condemn the killing of civilians and call on the military and protesters to work together was blocked by China, which was backed by Russia, during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.
Eight European countries instead issued their own joint statement criticising “the violent attacks in Sudan by Sudanese security services against civilians”.
The US called on the military rulers to “desist from violence” and urged talks with protesters to resume.
