Sudan protesters say 40 bodies pulled from Nile in capital

KHARTOUM, Sudan — At least 40 bodies of people slain by Sudanese security forces were pulled from the Nile River in the capital of Khartoum, organizers of pro-democracy demonstrations said Wednesday, and 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 Monday’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.

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...