UN Security Council to meet Wednesday on Sudan protests

The UN Security Council will meet next Wednesday in an informal session to address the latest developments in Sudan as demonstrations against military rule in the country continue, diplomatic sources said.

The session will be behind closed doors, the sources said Friday, adding that the meeting was requested by six of the council's 15 members: the United States, Britain, France, Norway, Ireland and Albania.

A common position of the Security Council "is not expected, as China and Russia would oppose it," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Beijing and Moscow in the past have stressed that the situation in Sudan, which has been on the edge of chaos since an October 25 military takeover, was an internal matter for the country and did not threaten international security.

The meeting will allow the UN special representative for Sudan, Volker Perthes, to brief Security Council members on conditions there since prime minister Abdallah Hamdok resigned Sunday amid protests against the ruling military.

Hamdok had been the face of the transition to civilian rule launched after the ouster of General Omar al-Bashir, but concerns have swelled about a slide back to dictatorship.

The United States and European Union warned Sudan's military against naming its own prime minister after Hamdok quit.

On Thursday three demonstrators were shot dead in the capital Khartoum and its suburbs, according to doctors and witnesses, as people gathered there and elsewhere in the country to protest against military rule.

Since the coup led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on October 25, the crackdown on anti-military protests has left 60 people dead and hundreds injured, according to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, an independent association.