Sudan protesters say 40 bodies pulled from the Nile

Sudanese celebrated in April after officials said the military had forced longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir to step down after 30 years in power. Photo / AP

At least 40 bodies of people slain by Sudanese security forces were pulled from the Nile River in the capital of Khartoum, organisers of pro-democracy demonstrations said.

New clashes brought the death toll in three days of the ruling military's crackdown to 100.

Word about the retrieval of the bodies came as Sudan's ruling general called for a resumption of negotiations with the protest leaders, which they promptly rejected.

They said the generals cannot be serious about talks while troops keep killing protesters.

A spokesman for the protesters said they instead would continue their demonstrations and strikes to pressure the military to hand over power to a civilian authority.

The reported discovery of the bodies in the Nile suggested that Tuesday's violent dispersal of the protest movement's main sit-in camp, outside the military's headquarters, was even bloodier than initially believed.

The attack on the camp was led by a notorious paramilitary unit called the Rapid Support Forces, along with other troops who waded into the camp, opening fire and beating protesters.

During the mayhem, the protesters' Doctors Committee said witnesses reported seeing bodies loaded into military vehicles to be dumped into the river.

The camp was not far from the Blue Nile, just upstream from where it joins the White Nile and then flows north through Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean.

The committee said in a statement that a day earlier, the RSF was seen pulling 40 bodies from the river and taking them away. It said it was not known where they were taken.

One activist, Amal al-Zein, said the number could be even higher. She said activists and private citizens had pulled dozens more bodies from the Nile in areas near the sit-in and took them to a hospital morgue.

"Some bodies have wounds from bullets, others seemed to have beaten and thrown in the Nile," she said.

On Tuesday, the Doctors Committee put the death toll from the crackdown at 40. Another 10 were reported killed in clashes yesterday in Khartoum and Omdurman, the capital's twin city across the Nile, and farther south in the White Nile state.

At least 10 more were killed in clashes today, the Doctors Committee said, with at least 326 people wounded over the past two days. The committee said it feared the final death toll would be much higher.

Protests continued in Omdurman and Khartoum's central Bahri and Buri district, where clashes erupted with the RSF, activists said.

- AP