Organisers had called for a million-person march in response to the killing of young protesters in El-Obeid, a city southwest of Khartoum, earlier this week.
Thursday’s killings, reported by the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, one of the main protest groups, came as opposition leaders said there had been some progress in talks with the military on reaching a deal to form a new government after the ousting of long-time leader Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
Sudan has been gripped by months of political turmoil that climaxed in the army overthrowing Bashir in April. The opposition has kept up protests, pressing the army to hand over to civilians.
Despite signing a deal in July which secured a three-year transition period and a joint sovereign council with a rotating leadership, talks over the wording of a constitutional declaration on the changes have stumbled.
"The agreement is really now just around the corner," Satea al-Hajj, a leader in the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition of opposition groups, said in a presser in Khartoum on Thursday.