Egyptian anti-military protesters clash with attackers at Abbassiya square, Cairo
(ANSAmed) - CAIRO - There have been fresh protests and further bloodshed during another day of violence in Cairo.
Between 20 and 30 people are reported to have died - the official count stands at just 12 - while between 50 and 100 were injured in the clashes, which have come around 20 days before the election on May 23 and 24 of Egypt's first President since the end of Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. The bloodiest episode involved a medical student, who had his throat slit by a large group of "baltageya", hired small-time criminals, who attacked protesters staging a sit-in at the top of the main road leading to the Ministry of Defence. The same attackers also laid waste to the waiting room and the emergency unit of a hospital in the area where some of those seriously injured were being treated. Clashes also occurred in the city of Alexandria.
Hundreds of demonstrators, who had been protesting since Friday evening in Cairo's central Abbasseya Square, were attacked at dawn by "unknown" assailants, as the official Egyptian media has described them, armed with sticks, knives, Molotov cocktails and rocks. The protesters, many of them Salafist supporters of Hazem Abu Ismail, the fundamentalist candidate excluded from the presidential race, others young revolutionaries from Tahrir Square, responded with rocks and Molotov cocktails of their own.
Many were seriously injured and some later died.
Only halfway through yesterday did soldiers and security forces intervene to break up the clashes, though rocks continued to be thrown beyond security lines, after news arrived from medical sources at field hospitals set up in the area that the number of dead and injured was growing.
There has been speculation, some of it from political quarters, that the incidents were connected to reports that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are planning to hold talks with parties today in the aim of postponing the presidential elections. The chief of staff of the armed forces, General Sami Hanan, was quick to answer during a meeting with parties held yesterday afternoon, which was boycotted by the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists from the Al-Nour party and activists formerly from the Brotherhood and now part of the Al Wasat party. General Hanan said that the military was ready to give up power from the day after the election of the new President, adding that the military junta that rose to power after the fall of Mubarak had no intention of continuing to rule Egypt.
There has been widespread reaction to the violence, including a march last early yesterday evening in solidarity with the victims, starting at Fath Square and ending at the site of the clashes.
An indignant Mohamed El-Baradei, a Nobel peace prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who for months was considered a frontrunner for the presidential elections before withdrawing from the race amid a dispute with the ruling military council, called the clashes in Abbasseya Square a "massacre", adding that "the government and the military" are unable to protect citizens "or are in league with petty criminals".
Among the numerous condemnations of the military from all quarters - from the Muslim Brotherhood to the January 25 revolutionaries - the former head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, said that the incidents have shown that the period of transition must come to an end as soon as possible, in order to restore the country to civil rule. Four of the 13 candidates in the running for the elections have decided to suspend campaigning, which officially began yesterday.
The apparent calm restored by police and the military at the end of yesterday does not guarantee that there will be no fresh outbreaks of violence in the next few days. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has called a press conference for later today.(ANSAmed).
