Scores of Demonstrators Killed in Egypt
By KAREEM FAHIM and MAYY EL SHEIKH
Published: July 27, 2013
CAIRO — The Egyptian authorities unleashed a ferocious attack on
Islamist protesters early Saturday, killing at least 65 people in the
second mass killing of demonstrators in three weeks and the deadliest
attack by the security services since Egypt’s uprising in early 2011.
Multimedia
Wounded Morsi supporters in a field hospital. More Photos »
The attack appeared to offer further evidence that Egypt’s security
establishment was reasserting its dominance after President Mohamed
Morsi’s ouster three weeks ago, and widening its crackdown on his allies
in the Muslim Brotherhood. The tactics — some victims were killed with
single gunshot wounds to the head — suggested that Egypt’s security
services felt no need to show any restraint.
‘They had orders to shoot to kill,” said Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood
spokesman. The message, he said, was, “This is the new regime.”
The killings came a day after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians marched
in response to a call by the military commander for mass demonstrations
to give him a “mandate” to fight terrorism. The appeal by Gen.
Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who has emerged as Egypt’s de facto leader since
the military removed Mr. Morsi from power, was widely seen as giving a
green light to the security forces to step up their repression of the
Islamists.
In the attack on Saturday, police officers were joined by civilians in
firing live ammunition at the protesters. With hundreds of people
gravely wounded, the toll seemed certain to rise, and by Saturday
evening had already surpassed the more than 60 deaths on July 8, when
soldiers and police officers fired on pro-Morsi demonstrators.
As the death toll has mounted, hopes have faded for a political solution
to the standoff between the military and the Brotherhood, whose leaders
are imprisoned or preparing themselves for jail.
In a televised news conference hours after the clash, the interior
minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, absolved his men of any responsibility. His
officers, Mr. Ibrahim said, “have never and will never shoot a bullet on
any Egyptian.”
He blamed the Brotherhood for the deaths, referring to it as “those who
preach and incite violence.” And he suggested that further repression
was imminent as the authorities prepared to break up sit-ins that
thousands of Mr. Morsi’s supporters have held for weeks.
Mr. Ibrahim said he hoped the protesters would be “reasonable” and
remove themselves voluntarily to avoid further bloodshed.
“We all hope and want the sit-ins to be broken up now, but blood is
precious for us as well,” he said. “Be sure that dispersing the sit-in
with force will lead to losses.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate who serves as vice president in
the interim government, added a rare note of support for the Brotherhood
from the country’s new leaders, writing on Twitter that he condemned
the “excessive use of force” and was trying to “end the standoff in a
peaceful manner.”
The violence broke out on Friday night after a day of large, competing
marches by supporters of Mr. Morsi and his opponents expressing
solidarity with the military. At least eight people died on Friday, but
there was not the kind of widespread violence that many had feared after
General Sisi’s speech last Wednesday calling for demonstrations in
support of the military.
That changed around 10:30 p.m., when groups of Mr. Morsi’s supporters
left their vast encampment in Nasr City, marching toward the central
October 6 Bridge, where police officers were stationed, according to
witnesses. Several people said that the protesters left the camp because
it had become overcrowded, and that people had fanned out from the
encampment along several boulevards. Others said they planned to march
through a nearby neighborhood.
The group that came under attack walked down Nasr Street, past the
reviewing stand where former President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated
in 1981, and the pyramid-shaped memorial to the unknown soldier across
the street, toward the bridge.
“We didn’t have any weapons,” said Mohamed Abdulhadi, who said he joined
the march, which was “not violent.” More than 10 other witnesses
confirmed his assertion.
The Interior Ministry released a video after the killings that it said
showed Morsi supporters firing birdshot at the police and damaging
property. It showed protesters throwing rocks, unidentified people
wandering into traffic, and one man pulling out what appears to be a
silver pistol and firing it, though it is not clear who the man is, or
which side of the fighting he was on.
Mohamed Saeed, a 27-year-old agricultural engineer, said he and some of
the other protesters started to exchange words with the officers before
even reaching the bridge.
“You know how it is,” he said. “Some of us said some provocative things,
and the tear gas started.”
The protesters threw rocks, and the
confrontation quickly escalated, Mr. Saeed and others said. The Morsi
supporters feared that the police were preparing to storm their
encampment, so they started building brick walls on the road to “to
prevent them from coming into the sit-in,” Mr. Saeed said.
An hour and a half after the clashes started, the police and their
allies started firing live ammunition and pellet guns, Mr. Saeed said.
Other witnesses said they saw snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings.
Ahmed Hagag was there with his best friend, Ashraf, both of them
woefully underequipped for a fight. “We went there with masks and
vinegar,” he said, in preparation for the tear gas. Ashraf, who had been
“yearning for martyrdom,” did not want to stand in the back, Mr. Hagag
said. “So it happened, and a bullet ended up in his heart.”
The violence went until morning, choking a field hospital nearby with bodies and patients near death.
Before the police retreated around 8 a.m., a spurt of gunfire came from
their positions, sending people scrambling for cover and setting off a
new stampede of ambulances.
In the morgue of the field hospital, 29 bodies sat in a row covered with
white sheets. A medic, Mahmoud al-Arabi, said the wounds revealed a
disturbing pattern of accuracy: many of the dead were shot in their
head, chest or neck.
Other doctors walked around in a daze, near relatives in disbelief. They
included a woman, who stumbled down the stairs after seeing a stricken
relative.
“Do you need a mosque?” a volunteer asked, but the woman kept walking.
Later Saturday, the Health Ministry said 65 people had been killed. The
Brotherhood said it had counted 66 dead and that an additional 61 people
were “clinically dead.”
The violence left the Brotherhood in an increasingly dire position, with
limited options, said Samer S. Shehata, a professor of Arab politics at
the University of Oklahoma and an authority on the Islamist group.
“They really can’t resort to violence — they don’t have a militia and it
runs against all their rhetoric and recent history,” Dr. Shehata said.
The group now faces the prospect of a broad legal ban of the kind it
suffered under President Hosni Mubarak, and it is not clear that it
could avoid that even if it agreed to stop the sit-ins and relinquish
its demands for the reinstatement of Mr. Morsi.
The interior minister on Saturday raised the prospect of a new threat to
the Brotherhood, saying he was reconstituting a state security agency
that under Mr. Mubarak was responsible for monitoring Islamists and
known for carrying out torture and forced disappearances. Without
security agencies that had a political focus, Mr. Ibrahim said, “the
security of the country doesn’t work.”
Labels: Conflict, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, July 27, 2013
<< Home