Sudan's opposition rejected Tuesday a plan by military authorities to hold elections within nine months, a prominent opposition figure said, after the country's worst day of violence since ex-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April. Protest organizers say 35 people died in the carnage Monday.
"We reject all that was stated in [Transitional Military Council Head Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan's statement," said Madani Abbas Madani, a leading figure in the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces opposition alliance.
The Council said earlier on Tuesday it was canceling all agreements with the main opposition coalition and called for elections within nine months.
The two sides had been negotiating over who would run the country after Bashir's ouster in April.
After the Council’s announcement, Madani said an open-ended civil disobedience campaign would continue to force the military council from power.
Streets in the Sudanese capital were empty on Tuesday, a day after a pro-democracy sit-in was violently overrun by the country's ruling military authorities, who say they want to stage early elections.
Mohammed Yousef al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals' Association, which has spearheaded the protests, said: "We are rejecting what Burhan said. Now, they have proved that they are a military coup."
He called for the international community and the UN Security Council not to recognize Burhan or the military authorities and put pressure on the generals to hand over power to a civilian-led authority.
"We have no choice but to continue our protests and civil disobedience until the fall of the military council," he added.
The UN Security Council is set to discuss the crackdown in Sudan on Tuesday afternoon in a closed-door session requested by the United Kingdom and Germany.
Burhan has said military leaders would investigate Monday's violence. He didn't mention security forces, but said protests leaders bore blame for the volatile situation because they have been "extending the negotiations and seeking to exclude other political and security forces" from participating in any transitional government, accusations rejected by al-Mustafa.
