[The
Egyptian Health Ministry said Thursday that at least 525 people were killed and
more than 3,700 injured in Cairo and other cities and towns in Wednesday’s
violence. It began when security forces used bulldozers, tear gas and gunfire
in an early morning assault to clear two pro-Morsi encampments in the capital,
sparking violent reactions elsewhere. The Interior Ministry said the dead
included 43 members of police forces.]
By Abigail Hauslohner and Sharaf al-Hourani
 |
| More pictures >> |
CAIRO —
Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi called Thursday for protest
marches after a violent government crackdown triggered clashes across Egypt,
leaving more than 500 people dead and the promise of a speedy transition to
democracy in tatters.
The
Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Morsi, urged followers to demonstrate late
Thursday afternoon in Cairo’s Nasr City district not far from the Rabaa
al-Adawiya Mosque, scene of some of the worst violence Wednesday. The
Brotherhood issued the call in defiance of a state of emergency declared by the
military-backed interim government, which took power following a July 3 coup
that deposed the country’s first democratically elected president after a
tumultuous year in office.
The
Egyptian Health Ministry said Thursday that at least 525 people were killed and
more than 3,700 injured in Cairo and other cities and towns in Wednesday’s
violence. It began when security forces used bulldozers, tear gas and gunfire
in an early morning assault to clear two pro-Morsi encampments in the capital,
sparking violent reactions elsewhere. The Interior Ministry said the dead
included 43 members of police forces.
It was
the deadliest day in Egypt since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni
Mubarak, and the fallout dealt a further blow to the prospect that the country
might resume its path toward democracy. At least 37 died in clashes in the
conservative oasis town of Fayoum; the tolls from other cities were not
immediately available.
By
nightfall, the interim government had declared a month-long state of emergency,
and Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and vice president, had
tendered his resignation in protest over the bloody crackdown.
The
United States strongly
condemned the violence and said it would hold the interim Egyptian
government accountable for its promises of a speedy transition to a
democratically elected civilian administration. Washington also criticized the
imposition of a state of emergency.
Egypt’s
Foreign Ministry on Thursday defended the state of emergency as a necessary
measure under dire circumstances.
“If you
don’t impose a state of emergency in a situation like this, when are you going
to impose it?” said Hatem Seif al-Nasser, deputy foreign minister for European
affairs, at a briefing for foreign news media.
Ministry
officials played for the reporters a video montage of state television footage
and what appeared to be military aerial footage showing protesters using
automatic weapons and hurling stones.
Echoing
earlier government claims, they said police exercised maximum restraint. The
officials said they were unaware of lethal gunshots fired by police at the
heads and torsos of Wednesday’s protester victims.
“Is there
any footage of this?” Nasser asked. Told there was extensive footage and photo
evidence online, he said: “It think it should be made available to the
authorities.”
“The
issue is who started firing. This is the most important issue,” said Badr
Abdelatty, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The
ministry said it did not know the whereabouts of top Muslim Brotherhood leaders
who were reported arrested Wednesday.
Asked how
badly ElBaradei’s resignation had hurt the interim government, Nasr Kamel,
another Foreign Ministry official, said: “We are not supposed to answer this
question. This is a political question.”
Hundreds
of Morsi-allied Muslim Brotherhood members were arrested nationwide after the
dawn assault, the Egyptian government said. The authorities blamed the Islamist
group for the violence and said police had confiscated guns, ammunition and
other weapons from the protest sites at Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares.
The raid
brought bulldozers crashing through protesters’ tents as security forces opened
fire through clouds of smoke and tear gas. Witnesses later posted footage
showing dozens of bodies lining the rooms of a makeshift hospital run by Morsi
supporters outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.
Mohamed
el-Beltagi, a top Brotherhood politician whose teenage daughter was among those
killed, said security forces had sacrificed their legitimacy by carrying out
the attack, and he demanded that any soldier “must take off his uniform’’ or be
considered a “tool” of the government. He warned that the spreading violence
could quickly turn Egypt into a new Syria, where an ongoing conflict has killed
more than 100,000 people.
Egypt’s
interim interior minister said Brotherhood supporters later stormed several
provincial headquarters across the country and set as many as seven Christian
churches ablaze. The sectarian attacks reflect Islamist anger over the strong
backing for the military shown by many members of Egypt’s Christian minority.
Authoritarian
approach
The
sprawling tent cities of men, women and children had been erected by
Brotherhood supporters to demand the reinstatement of Morsi, Egypt’s first
democratically elected president. On Wednesday evening, the interim prime
minister and the interior minister said security forces had acted with the
utmost “self-restraint” after six weeks of unauthorized sit-ins by Morsi’s
supporters.
In
addition to scores of protesters, the dead included at
least two journalists, one of them a cameraman for Britain’s Sky News
network.
The
large-scale arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members echoed the authoritarian
approach adopted by the government during the Mubarak era, when the Islamist
group was banned and heavily repressed. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice
Party, which backs Morsi, had emerged after Mubarak’s fall as the country’s
strongest political force. But the group’s popularity plummeted under Morsi, as
Egyptians complained of a sinking economy and little political reform.
The party
said the death toll in the crackdown is far higher than the government
acknowledges, putting the number at more than 2,000. The figure could not be
verified.
In his
letter of resignation, ElBaradei, the vice president, stopped short of
criticizing the security forces or military directly. But he said it had
“become difficult for me to hold responsibility for decisions that I do not
agree with, whose consequences I fear.’’
“I cannot
be responsible for one drop of blood in front of God, and then in front of my
conscience, especially with my faith that we could have avoided it,” ElBaradei
said in the letter to Adly Mansour, the interim president.
Speaking
from Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing, deputy press
secretary Josh Earnest said “the world is watching” events in Cairo. He said
the White House had urged the interim government and all parties in Egypt “to
refrain from violence and resolve their differences peacefully.”
The
military has held Morsi and his top aides, as well as other prominent Islamist
leaders, virtually incommunicado since the coup. Last month, Egyptian
prosecutors said they were investigating the former president on charges of
murder and treason.
Morsi
supporters outside Rabaa al-Adawiya acknowledged Wednesday morning that they
had heard the government’s warnings of a raid for weeks. They said black-clad
riot police and plainclothes men in flak jackets moved into the camps about 7
a.m., confronting protesters from multiple side streets with a barrage of tear
gas and then gunfire.
Local
television footage showed protesters streaming out of the Rabaa al-Adawiya
sit-in Wednesday evening, some of them running with children, their hands held
up in surrender, as security forces pushed further into the camp. Footage
posted online also purported to show pro-Morsi demonstrators firing assault
rifles.
The
attacks set off retaliatory clashes and protest marches. Crowds of Morsi
supporters marched toward eastern Cairo in the late morning, running into a
barrage of gunfire as they confronted police lines. Others hurled stones and
molotov cocktails as they clashed with anti-Islamist civilians elsewhere in the
capital and in cities across this vast nation of 85 million.
The
state-run Middle East News Agency said Muslim Brotherhood supporters set fire
to the government headquarters in the coastal city of Alexandria and attacked
government offices in the Nile Delta city of Damanhour. In the southern
Islamist stronghold of Beni Suef, Morsi supporters occupied the provincial
headquarters and took three soldiers hostage, state media said.
Government
officials said Egypt’s stock market and banks were closed and would remain so
through Thursday.
On
the ground
In Cairo,
Islam Fathi, a 20-year-old university student from the Nile Delta town of
Mansoura, was among the Morsi supporters who had manned a sandbag perimeter
overnight at the Rabaa al-Adawiya site. He said protesters had begun to relax
after dawn prayers when the police assault began.
Fathi
said he and others fled to a nearby cafe but were confronted by police, who
struck them and ordered them toward a van. “They took our money and our
phones,” he said. Several of the detainees were released, he said; others were
not.
By late
morning, tents were torn and strewn about at the site as military helicopters
circled overhead. By Wednesday night, TV footage showed fires burning across
vast swaths of Cairo’s neighborhoods, where clashes had raged.
“I was
here every day. There was no violence inside,” one female bystander said. “I’d
come for a few hours, then go home.’’
Not far
away stood a line of hulking blue trucks, the kind used to haul prisoners that
had been ubiquitous during protests under Mubarak. “Anybody who speaks any
small words, they take them in the police vans,” said the woman, who didn’t
have a chance to give her name because a sudden barrage of tear gas sent her
and other bystanders running for cover.
As noon
approached, a protester declared, “We’ve started a new beginning. It was
peaceful before. I don’t think it will be peaceful now.”
William
Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
