Demonstrations took place across Sudan on Tuesday in protest at the alleged gang-rape of a teenager by security forces. The 18-year-old said she was attacked in Khartoum on Monday by up to nine men dressed in the uniforms of the security forces involved in dispersing regular protests held across Sudan since October’s military coup. The woman said she was travelling home when the police officers stopped the minibus looking for people who had been involved in that day’s protests. “We told them no,” she said. She said that the officers then fired teargas inside the bus and when she tried to get off she was raped and beaten. Sulaima Ishaq, the head of the violence against women unit at Sudan’s social development ministry, said a number of sexual assaults on women and men had been reported near to the place the young woman was attacked in recent weeks. She said security forces “have been increasingly using this tactic to decrease people’s movements on the streets. That’s a well-known oppressive policy in our country … it is not the first time that they have been doing this and it won’t be the last time. “We have a history of using women’s bodies, whether it’s in Darfur or at the dispersal of the sit-in in 2019 or at the protests. The security apparatus use rape as part of their work,” she said. In December, the UN said it had received 13 allegations of rape and gang-rape during attempts to disperse a sit-in. On Tuesday, women and girls took to the streets in Khartoum, Omdurman and in three cities in South Darfur, some carrying signs that read: “They will not break you” and “We will not be broken.” In the capital, the government closed bridges to stop protesters reaching the presidential palace. Protester Shahinaz Jamal said she couldn’t sleep after hearing about the assault. “Not only me, all the revolutionaries in my area. Nobody managed to sleep. We are so outraged. They think that they can stop women from going outside by doing this. But that will never happen. We are not afraid of them,” she said. “We are out today to tell them that women’s bodies are not the space of the battles.” More than 80 people have been killed and hundreds injured during protests against the 25 October coup. The latest incident is being investigated by police. The police did not respond to requests for comment.