Security forces opened fired with guns and heavy tear gas in the Sudanese capital Khartoum as anti-military rule protesters marched towards the presidential palace on Thursday, witnesses said.

The police said a senior officer was killed while providing security to the protest close to the presidential palace. The statement did not say how Col. Ali Hamad was killed, but local media reported that he was stabbed to death as security forces were dispersing the protesters.

In Khartoum’s Bahri district, a protester was shot and killed and dozens were wounded when security forces intervened with live ammunition to break up the march, according to the Sudan Doctors Committee.

Huge crowds have regularly taken to the streets demanding civilian rule.

More than 62 people have been killed, and hundreds of others injured in the near-daily protests since the military on Oct. 25 ousted the civilian-led government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

Demonstrators, mostly young people, marched on Thursday in different locations in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman, footage circulated online showed. Security was tight. There were also protests in the restive western region of Darfur.

The protesters demanded the removal of generals from power and the establishment of a fully civilian government to lead the transition.

Hamdok, who was the civilian face of Sudan's transitional government in the past two years, resigned earlier this month, citing failure to reach a compromise between the generals and the pro-democracy movement. He had been reinstated in November in a deal with the military that angered the pro-democracy movement.