Senators from Italy's ruling grassroots 5-Star Movement on Wednesday deplored the slaughter by paramilitaries of scores of pro-democracy protesters in Sudan's capital Khartoum and elsewhere in the country this week. The lawmakers urged the transitional military council's "immediate" replacement by a civilian-led government to avert a civil war.
"We strongly condemn the bloody repression unleashed by the military junta in Khartoum which, according to the latest news reports, has caused at least 60 deaths and continues in the streets and even in the hospitals where the wounded are hospitalised," 5-Star members of the Senate's foreign affairs committee said in a statement.
The statement blamed the vicious crackdown - which has killed at least 60 protesters since Monday - on Sudanese general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy head of Sudan's transitional military council, who leads the feared paramilitaries, called the Rapid Support Forces.
"This is an act of repression ordered by the real strong man of the Transitional Military Council, General Dagalo, war criminal in Darfur, and his notorious Janjaweed militias, protagonists of this brutal repressive operation," the statement said.
The statement appealed to the international community "to show solidarity" in putting pressure on the main supporters of Sudan's miltary junta - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
"These countries are already responsible for the Libyan chaos and Yemeni drama and must make the generals of Kharotum stop the repression and consent to the immediate installation of a civilian-led government, preventing Sudan's slide into a civil war," it said.
Sudan's RSF was organised and armed by ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir and is largely composed of Janjaweed militia that have been accused of systematic human rights abuses during the war in Darfur.
The crackdown has drawn strong criticism from the US, UK and other nations.
.jpg)
.jpg)
