Sudan's military rulers moved Monday to break up a weeks-long sit-in outside Khartoum's army headquarters, leaving at least nine protesters dead, a doctors' committee said as gunfire was heard echoing from the site.
Heavily armed security forces in pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns were deployed in large numbers all around the capital, while gunfire was heard from the protest site by an AFP journalist.
The United States and Britain called for an end to the crackdown on demonstrators, who want the generals behind the overthrow of veteran president Omar al-Bashir to hand over to civilian rule.
The death toll "from the massacre today has risen to nine martyrs," the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, which is close to the protesters, wrote on Facebook.
It also reported a "large number of critical casualties" and called for "urgent support" from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organisations to help the wounded.
The military council has denied multiple reports of their forces violently dispersing the sit-in in front of army headquarters.
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"Now an attempt is taking place to disperse the sit-in at the headquarters of the people's armed forces by force by the military council," said the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the group which spearheaded nationwide protests that started in December.
The SPA said it amounted to a "bloody massacre" and called on Sudanese to take part in "total civil disobedience" to topple the military council.
The doctors' committee said forces were also opening fire inside the city's East Nile Hospital and "chasing peaceful protesters".
It said another hospital near the site of the sit-in was surrounded and volunteers were prevented from reaching it.
Rallies against Bashir's authoritarian, three-decade rule led to his ouster in April, but protesters have remained outside the army headquarters calling on the generals to cede power to a transitional authority.
Near the demonstration site, a witness living in the Burri neighbourhood said he could "hear the sound of gunfire and I see a plume of smoke rising from the area of the sit-in."
The US embassy in Khartoum said "security forces' attacks against protesters and other civilians is wrong and must stop."