The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors announced that “a demonstrator was killed by live bullets during marches in the Al-Kalakla area in southern Khartoum” during new protests calling for an end to military control of power after last year’s military coup.

The committee said in a statement: “This brings the number of victims of the crackdown to 97 since the beginning of the protests that regularly flare up against the military coup.”

The head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, had previously vowed to release political prisoners to pave the way for dialogue between Sudanese factions.

The United Nations, together with the African Union, is committed to facilitating negotiations between the Sudanese parties to resolve the crisis.

In 2019, the army ended 30 years of President Omar al-Bashir’s rule following a popular uprising in which Sudanese women led protests against the regime, paving the way for a transition in Sudan. this was supposed to lead to civilian, democratic rule, but that transitional phase was cut short by a coup, then army commander Lieutenant General Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan told his civilian counterparts in October.

Since then, thousands of demonstrators have regularly taken to the streets to protest the dominance of the military in Sudan’s politics and economy, which has been ruled almost non-stop by generals since independence 66 years ago.