"Everyone is staying at home. If you leave your house you wouldn't be able to travel more than half a mile anyway," said another Khartoum resident who asked not to be named.

"Normally if this was the day before Eid the shops would be full of families buying food or clothes for the children. But nothing is open. The city is at a standstill."

Going out to pray was seen as an act of dissent because the the military council had declared Eid would fall on Wednesday, not Tuesday.

The SPA had urged people to got out anyway to "pray for the martyrs" and then "demonstrate peacefully".

The Telegraph understands that key protest leaders have gone into hiding.

Sources close to the revolutionary movement said they now believe a combination of a general strike and mutinies by sympathetic soldiers could bring down the military council.

"I don't think this is the end of the revolution. On the contrary I think this is the beginning of the real revolution, because most of the people now are very determined to overthrow or remove the TMC," said Osman Mirghani, editor of al Tayer, an opposition-leaning newspaper