Egypt's Day of Shame
American Journalist Beaten By Police In Cairo
Sky News Cameraman Killed In Egypt
Egypt: global outcry steps up pressure on US to suspend aid to military
White House 'watching' as state of emergency called and Mohamed ElBaradei resigns in protest against killings
The United States has led a chorus of international concern about Egypt's crackdown on demonstrators, publicly condemning the violence that resulted in the worst loss of life on a single day since the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi last month.
The White House said "the world is watching" after a day on which at least 278 people were killed. But there was still no sign that the US was prepared to characterise Morsi's removal by the army as a coup – which would trigger an automatic congressional ban on $1.3bn in annual aid to the powerful Egyptian military.
"The violence will only make it more difficult to move Egypt forward on a path to lasting stability and democracy and runs directly counter to the pledges by the interim government to pursue reconciliation," said spokesman Josh Earnest.
Lasting stability appeared further away than ever on Wednesday evening after the military declared a month-long state of emergency and the liberal Mohamed ElBaradei resigned as vice-president in the military-backed interim government.
The National Alliance to Support Legitimacy called on "all Egyptian people" to take to the streets "to stop the massacre" after police attacked its two sit-ins in Cairo's Nahda and Rabaa al-Adawiya squares early on Wednesday.
The alliance is an Islamist grouping led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been demanding Morsi's reinstatement as president since he was ousted by the army. Morsi supporters called for further nationwide protests.
Fatalities included the 17-year-old daughter of Mohamed Beltagi, a Brotherhood leader. Three other senior figures were reportedly detained in what appeared to be the start of a wide-ranging crackdown on the Islamist movement. Egypt's health ministry said that 235 civilians had been killed and 1,400 injured, while Interior minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen had died. A statement issued by the Egypt Anti Coup Alliance said "more than 2,000" had been killed.
Trouble also spread beyond Cairo, with reports of a church set on fire in Sohag, 250 miles south of the capital. Ten people were killed in Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast.
ElBaradei's resignation statement underlined the dilemma faced by liberal and secular supporters of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. "It has become difficult for me to hold responsibility for decisions that I do not agree with, whose consequences I fear," ElBaradei said as a curfew was imposed across the country.
"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." The Nobel laureate said that those who incited "violence and terrorism" – language the government has used to describe the Brotherhood – would only benefit from the turmoil.
Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, said he was "deeply concerned" at the escalating violence and unrest. "I am disappointed that compromise has not been possible. I condemn the use of force in clearing protests and call on the security forces to act with restraint."
Baroness Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, who met Morsi in his place of detention earlier this month, said in a statement: "Confrontation and violence is not the way forward to resolve key political issues. I deplore the loss of lives, injuries and destruction in Cairo and other places in Egypt."
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the violence and urged an effort at "inclusive reconciliation". France and Germany also called for dialogue.
The strongest language came from Turkey, whose government has been a firm supporter of the Egyptian Brotherhood. It urged the UN security council and the Arab League to act quickly to stop a "massacre". Iran warned of the risk of civil war. Rachid Ghannouchi, president of Tunisia's governing moderate Islamist party Ennahda, called the crackdown an "abject crime". He expressed solidarity with the pro-Morsi backers' bid to "recover their freedom and oppose the coup d'etat".
Analysts said that the response from Washington fitted a pattern of weak statements that had allowed the Egyptian military to act with impunity. "[The] US had several chances to demonstrate [that] its threats to suspend aid were credible, but each time backed down," tweeted the Brookings Institution expert Shadi Hamid. "That policy has a price." Hamid also told al-Jazeera TV: "Clearing all the sit-ins without addressing fundamental political issues won't stop the clashes."
Marc Lynch commented in Foreign Policy: "It's time for Washington to stop pretending. Its efforts to maintain its lines of communication with the Egyptian military, quietly mediate the crisis and help lay the groundwork for some new, democratic political process have utterly failed. Egypt's new military regime, and a sizable and vocal portion of the Egyptian population, have made it very clear that they just want the United States to leave it alone.
For once, Washington should give them their wish. As long as Egypt remains on its current path, the Obama administration should suspend all aid, keep the embassy in Cairo closed, and refrain from treating the military regime as a legitimate government."
Egypt's Day of Shame
Cairo massacre: Scores killed and hundreds more injured as Egyptian government declares war on the country's Islamists
As machine gun fire crackled around the besieged Islamist encampment in eastern Cairo today, a 12 year-old boy called Omar was sat on a mattress drinking from his carton of orange juice. Just a few yards away, the bodies of 31 protesters lay on the grubby, blood-caked floor.
Many had been shot through the head and chest with high velocity bullets; some bore gnarled lips betraying the agonising throes of death.
When asked how he felt to witness such scenes, the young boy - wearing Puma flip-flops and blue jeans - remained silent and appeared confused for a few moments. Then, with childlike fragility, he said very simply: “It's not very nice”.
Whatever else the Egyptian state was hoping to achieve by launching its long-awaited crackdown, the hundreds of young children who were cowering inside the besieged sit-in will not likely forget the ferocity of a government which has now declared war on the country's Islamists.
Egypt's leaders have unleashed a chain of unforeseeable consequences. Deadly clashes were reported in provinces around the country, as police stations, government institutions and Coptic churches were attacked in apparent revenge attacks.
Scores were killed, hundreds more injured.
In a sign of how deeply the crackdown will affect Egypt's ongoing political transition, Mohamed el-Baradei, the vice President and Nobel laureate, resigned in protest over the crackdown. Meanwhile Egypt's interim government has imposed a month-long state of emergency and night time curfew.
Inside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque, the building which lies at the heart of the east Cairo encampment, crying babies clung to their mothers as gunfire raged around them following the start of the operation.
In the centre of the prayer hall, laid out on the carpet among hundreds of women and toddlers in the stifling heat, ten bodies had been placed side by side inside a cordon.
A little girl of about seven or eight, wearing pink trousers and a T-shirt, made her way from one side of the mosque to the other by tottering between the heads of the corpses.
“The police and the army don't understand any language except force,” said Khalid Mohsen, a 50-year-old engineer who was trapped inside the siege. “They want to kill anybody who has an opposing view.”
Given the sheer level of firepower unleashed on protesters, it is a view which many Islamists may find hard to argue with.
According to witnesses the gunfire began early in the morning at around six o'clock, as security forces who had surrounded the site launched their ferocious assault. At a separate encampment in the west of the city, a similar operation was also ordered.
By late afternoon the shooting was still continuing. Heavy semi-automatic bursts of gunfire echoed around the nearby suburbs throughout the day. If there was any let up, it was brief. For about 10 hours, the supporters of Mohamed Morsi were subjected to a near-continuous barrage of live fire.
Single sniper shots shrieked down Nasr Road, the main thoroughfare leading through the camp; sustained bursts of machine gun fire clattered into nearby buildings; wayward rounds shredded through the labyrinthine networks of tents and tarpaulin shacks.
At the nearby hospital, staff draped the windows with blinds as a precaution against sniper rounds.
One doctor at the hospital, who gave his name only as Ahmed, said that even the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008 had not been as bad.
“I was working there as a medic during that battle,” he told The Independent. “The Jews were much more humane that what is happening today. Even in war, the rules are more respectable than this.
”In 12 days of fighting in Gaza, there were less dead than in six hours here.“
Amid the dizzying chaos of the massacre - the third which has been perpetrated against Egypt's Islamists in a little over a month - reliable casualty figures were difficult to come by.
According to Egypt's Health Ministry, 149 people were confirmed dead. Yet the true figure is likely to be much higher. Dr Hisham Ibrahim, the head of the Rabaa al-Adawiya field clinic, told The Independent that several hundred people had been killed.
Whatever the final tally, the constant stream of bullet-riddled, disfigured protesters meant it was impossible to store the corpses properly. Inside a room which during the previous two massacres has been used as a morgue, 42 bodies were crammed up against each other on the floor.
As the carnage unfolded and more protesters were killed, other areas were appropriated to house the dead.
Behind the stage which has been used by Islamist leaders to rally pro-Morsi supporters for the past six weeks, 25 bodies were laid out wrapped in white shawls, unrefrigerated in the sweltering August sun.
Next to the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque - where flies were soon gathering on the ten corpses laid out in the prayer hall - another room being used as a makeshift morgue.
A total of 31 bodies had been placed here. Volunteers had no time for sentimentality; the same hall was being used to treat wounded protesters, many of whom were lying moaning in agony just yards from the nearby cadavers.
”It's a genocide,“ said Dr Yehia Makkayah, a medic at the Rabaa hospital. ”They want us to disappear from the country. I could never imagine that Egyptians would shoot Egyptians using these weapons.“
Such was the chaos inside the hospital, a reception area on the second floor had been utilised as yet another morgue to store a further 26 bodies. One floor up in a tiny storeroom, two more corpses were lying in gleaming pools of fresh blood.
Corridors barely a yard wide were lined with dozens upon dozens of wounded. Luckier patients received drip feeds from a friend or relative; those who were luckier still had the luxury of a hospital bed. The floors were sticky with blood and vomit.
The sheer volume of the dead and the dying meant it was often impossible to move up and down the main staircase. Injured protesters, most of them felled by live fire, were stretchered up to the operating rooms, blood trickling from their wounds as they went. The dead were stretchered in the other direction, down to the lower level morgues.
”The army are the dogs of the Israelis,“ said Mohamed Mostafa, a vet who was keeping vigil at the bedside of his brother-in-law, a 36-year-old whose spine had been shattered by a bullet. ”They are not Egyptians.“
At the main morgue beside the field clinic, the mother of one victim, 16-year-old Malik Safwat, struggled to reach him through the tightly-packed rows of corpses.
”Don't move that body,“ said one of the morgue attendants to a volunteer trying to clear a path. ”Move a lighter one.“ She eventually found him, tearfully shaking his left knee from side to side as if to try and wake him up. His sister had also arrived. ”My darling,“ she said in a trembling voice. ”Why my darling?“
By around 5pm, the security services had gained access to the hospital and were clearing everybody out into the surrounding streets. Thousands of people began filing out of the camp, as police bulldozers moved in to destroy the remaining tents.
Egypt: Many are Dead, But We are Still in the Streets
August 14, 2013
Dispatch From Giza
Egypt: Many are Dead, But We are Still in the Streets
Giza, Egypt.
A month since our last dispatch and 6 weeks into our peaceful demonstrations, the military junta in Egypt, led by Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has launched it largest attack so far, this morning 14thAugust
The Giza site has been surrounded and 10,000 of the demonstrators have been trapped in the Engineering Faculty of Cairo University, and are under fire. There are 4 dead and 300 seriously wounded there and cannot get ambulances. The rest of the demonstrators, which include us, have split off and have moved to consolidate with the protesters at Mostafa Mahmoud near the Zamalek Sports Stadium.
All of us are safe and sound, but we don’t know how many of our other friends and colleagues are dead and injured yet. Many people died in their tents as a result of the use of flame throwers when armored vehicles rolled into Nahda square at 6.00 a.m. when they slept.
The biggest demonstration at Raba’a el-Adawiyya in Medinat Naṣr has held, and we are told by the local doctors at the Maidani Hospital on site that there are at least 500 dead there and thousands of injured (al-Jazeera as at 12 GMT quotes 2000 dead, and 10,000 injured). Live bullets, as well as tear gas were used and fired from armored vehicles, bulldozers, and helicopters, while police snipers have been positioned on rooftops.
Many are also dead at other demonstrations, especially that near the republican guard.
Massive new demonstrations have exploded in Alexandria, Helwan, Assiut, Minya, Sohag and Luxor in particular, with police stations and governorates under siege, and now many deaths are starting to be reported for these locations as police and army fire with live ammunition.
Muslim Brotherhood Claims Thousands Killed as Govt Shuts Protest Camps
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/muslim_brotherhood_claims_thousands_killed_20130814/
Posted on Aug 14, 2013
The interim Egyptian government has declared a national emergency and killed 149 people, it says, while clearing camps of people protesting its existence.The Muslim Brotherhood, which was ousted from power by military coup, says the death toll is more than 2,000.
Protesters had demanded that Mohamed Morsi, who won Egypt’s first democratic presidential election, be restored to power.
Egyptians are divided. Another mass protest, this one against Morsi, was the military’s original justification for the coup.
The declared state of emergency is troubling, since its the same tactic used by Egypt’s former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, to detain and torture people he saw as a threat. Except for a few months off, Egypt was in a state of emergency from 1967 to 2012.
BBC:
Egyptian security forces had to break up protest camps in Cairo to “restore security”, interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi has said.
Mr Beblawi said it was not an easy decision to disperse the supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi.
Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said the police had “dealt professionally” with the protesters.
Egypt Protests: Clashes Between Security Forces, Protesters Turn Deadly In Cairo
By HAMZA HENDAWI and MAGGIE MICHAEL
08/14/13 02:16 PM ET EDT 
CAIRO --
Riot police backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers and helicopters Wednesday swept away two encampments of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, sparking running street battles elsewhere in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. At least 149 people were killed nationwide, many of them in the crackdown on the protest sites.
Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-reform leader in the interim government, resigned in protest over the assaults as the military-backed leadership imposed a monthlong state of emergency and nighttime curfew.
Clashes broke out elsewhere in the capital and other provinces, injuring more than 1,400 people nationwide, as Islamist anger spread over the dispersal of the 6-week-old sit-ins of Morsi supporters that divided the country. Police stations, government buildings and Coptic Christian churches were attacked or set ablaze.
The violence drew condemnation from other predominantly Muslim countries, but also from the U.N. and the United States, which said the crackdown will only make it more difficult for Egypt to move forward.
The assault to take control of the two sit-in sites came after days of warnings by the interim administration that replaced Morsi after he was ousted in a July 3 coup. The camps on opposite sides of the Egyptian capital began in late June to show support for Morsi. Protesters – many from Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood – have demanded his reinstatement.
The smaller camp was cleared relatively quickly, but it took hours for police to take control of the main sit-in site, which is near the Rabbah al-Adawiya Mosque that has served as the epicenter of the pro-Morsi campaign.
Several senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood who were wanted by police were detained after police stormed the camp near the mosque, according to security officials and state television. Among those seized were Brotherhood leaders Mohammed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian, and hard-line cleric Safwat Hegazy – all wanted by prosecutors to answer allegations of inciting violence and conspiring to kill anti-Morsi protesters.
Police dismantled the main stage near the mosque in the eastern Cairo district of Nasr City, the official MENA news agency said. An AP reporter saw hundreds of protesters leaving the sit-in site carrying their personal belongings.
Smoke clogged the sky above Cairo and fires smoldered on the streets, which were lined with charred poles and tarps after several tents were burned.
In imposing the state of emergency, the government ordered the armed forces to support the police in restoring law and order and protect state facilities. The nighttime curfew affects Cairo and 10 provinces.
The Egyptian Central Bank instructed commercial banks to close branches in areas affected by the chaos, a sign of alarm that the violence could spiral out of control. The landmark Giza Pyramids and the Egyptian Museum also were closed to visitors for the day as a precaution, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.
The turmoil was the latest chapter in a bitter standoff between Morsi's supporters and the interim leadership that took over the Arab world's most populous country. The military ousted Morsi after millions of Egyptians massed in the streets at the end of June to call for him to step down, accusing him of giving the Brotherhood undue influence and failing to implement vital reforms or bolster the ailing economy.
The coup provoked similar protests by Morsi's backers after he and other Brotherhood leaders were detained as divisions have deepened, dealing a major blow to hopes of a return to stability after the 2011 revolution that toppled autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Morsi has been held at an undisclosed location. Other Brotherhood leaders have been charged with inciting violence or conspiring in the killing of protesters.
"The world cannot sit back and watch while innocent men, women and children are being indiscriminately slaughtered. The world must stand up to the military junta's crime before it is too late," said a statement by the Brotherhood's media office in London emailed to The Associated Press.
ElBaradei, a former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, was named only last month as interim President Adly Mansour's deputy for foreign relations.
In his resignation letter, he wrote that he is not prepared to be held responsible for a "single drop of blood," and that only more violence will result, according to a copy that was emailed to The Associated Press. He said Egypt is more polarized than when he took office.
The smaller of the two protest camps was cleared of protesters by late morning, with most of them taking refuge in the nearby Orman botanical gardens on the campus of Cairo University and the zoo.
An AP reporter at the scene said security forces chased protesters in the zoo. At one point, a dozen protesters, mostly men with beards and wearing traditional Islamist garb, were handcuffed on a sidewalk under guard outside the university campus. The private ONTV network showed firearms and ammunition allegedly seized from protesters.
Security forces later stormed the larger camp near the mosque in the Cairo district of Nasr City. The mosque has served as the epicenter of pro-Morsi campaign, with several Brotherhood leaders wanted by police believed to be hiding inside.
The pro-Morsi Anti-Coup alliance claimed security forces used live ammunition, but the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, said its forces only used tear gas and that they came under fire from the camp.
The Interior Ministry statement also warned that forces would deal firmly with protesters who were acting "irresponsibly," suggesting that it would respond in kind if its men are fired upon. It said it would guarantee safe passage to all who want to leave the Nasr City site but would arrest those wanted for questioning by prosecutors.
Army troops did not take part in the two operations, but provided security at the locations. Police and army helicopters hovered over both sites hours after the police launched the simultaneous actions shortly after 7 a.m. (0500 GMT).
The Health Ministry said 149 people were killed and 1,403 injured across Egypt, but it did not immediately provide a breakdown.
An alliance of pro-Morsi groups said Asmaa Mohammed el-Batagy, the 17-year-old daughter of the senior Brotherhood figure who was detained by police, was shot and killed. Her brother, Ammar, confirmed her death on his Twitter account.
Two journalists were among the dead – Mick Deane, 61, a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News, and Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, a reporter for the Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, the news organizations reported. Both had been reported to be shot.
A security official said 200 protesters were arrested at both sites. Several men could be seen walking with their hands up as they were led away by black-clad police.
The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm claimed that more than 500 protesters were killed and some 9,000 wounded in the two camps, but those figures could not be confirmed and nothing in the video from AP or local TV networks suggested such a high death toll.
Before he was detained, Mohammed el-Beltagy put the death toll at more than 300, urged police and army troops to mutiny, and said Egyptians should take to the streets to show their disapproval of the crackdown.
"Oh, Egyptian people, your brothers are in the square. ... Are you going to remain silent until the genocide is completed?" said el-Beltagy, who is wanted by authorities to answer allegations of inciting violence.
Police fired tear gas elsewhere in Cairo to disperse Morsi supporters who wanted to join the Nasr City camp after it came under attack. State TV also reported that a police captain had been abducted by Morsi supporters in the area, but there was no official statement about that.
Islam Tawfiq, a Brotherhood member at the Nasr City sit-in, said the camp's medical center was filled with dead and that the injured included children.
"No one can leave and those who do are either arrested or beaten up," he told AP.
Security officials said train services between northern and southern Egypt were suspended to prevent Morsi supporters from traveling to Cairo. Clashes erupted on two roads in the capital's upscale Mohandiseen district when Morsi supporters opened fire on passing cars and pedestrians. Police used tear gas to chase them away.
The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.
Churches belonging to Egypt's minority Coptic Christians were torched in four provinces south of Cairo – Minya, Assiut, Sohag and the desert oasis Fayoum. In the city of Bani Suef south of Cairo, protesters set three police cars on fire. Farther south in the Islamist stronghold of Assiut, police used tear gas to disperse pro-Morsi crowds in the city center.
Morsi supporters want him reinstated and are boycotting the military-sponsored political process, which includes amending the Islamist-backed constitution adopted last year and holding parliamentary and presidential elections early next year.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, speaking at Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where President Barack Obama is vacationing, said the crackdown ran counter to the pledges made by Egypt's interim government.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office called it "a serious blow to the hopes of a return to democracy," while Iran warned that the violence "strengthens the possibility of civil war."
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who also condemned the violence, called for "a genuine transition to a genuine democracy. That means compromise from all sides – the President Morsi supporters but also the military."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all Egyptians to focus on reconciliation, while European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said dialogue should be encouraged through "peaceful protest, protecting all citizens and enabling full political participation."
At least 250 people have died in previous clashes since the coup.
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, had just completed a year in office when he was toppled. He has largely been held incommunicado but was visited by Ashton and an African delegation.
Several bids by the U.S., the European Union and Gulf Arab states to reconcile the two sides in Egypt in an inclusive political process have failed, with the Brotherhood insisting that Morsi must first be freed along with several of the group's leaders who have been detained in connection with incitement of violence.
The trial of the Brotherhood's leader, Mohammed Badie, and his powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shater, on charges of conspiring to kill protesters is due to start later this month. Badie is on the run, but el-Shater is in detention. Four others are standing trial with them on the same charges.
Associated Press reporters Tony G. Gabriel in Cairo and Mamdouh Thabet in Assiut contributed to this report.
Egypt Bloodshed May Be Ill Omen for Broader Region
By RICK GLADSTONE
The ferocious assaults by Egyptian security forces to rout Islamist
protesters on Wednesday have reinforced fears that political change
toward tolerant democracies in the Arab world, exalted as the possible
outcome of the revolutionary fervor that toppled autocracies in Egypt,
Libya and Tunisia a few years ago, has faded into a fleeting and perhaps
unattainable ideal.
In Egypt, where the first democratically elected president, Mohamed
Morsi, has been languishing in detention for more than a month, the
polarization of society and economic paralysis have reached new
extremes, a state of emergency has been declared and protester
encampments in the capital, Cairo, are like war zones.
In Tunisia, the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring, the moderate
Islamist government that took power is increasingly fragile.
Libya remains marred by violent lawlessness and Islamist extremism
nearly two years after its strongman, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was
killed. Syria, where the political opposition once drew inspiration from
Colonel Qaddafi’s demise, has sunk into a catastrophic and
jihadist-tinged civil war, with no sign that President Bashar al-Assad
has any intention of leaving power and with increasing indications that
his country could be the next big haven for Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Throughout the region, the demands of millions of ordinary citizens who
have clamored for change — for jobs, food, health care and basic
security to live their lives in peace — have not been addressed by the
political upheavals so far. If anything their grievances have worsened.
“What started out being an Arab Spring is quickly morphing into
something much larger,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a scholar at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In Egypt’s case, he said,
“you’re not only seeing unprecedented levels of clashes, but I think
you’re seeing the increased demands of everyday people — now part of the
governance factor. This is proving to be extremely unstable.”
At the same time, Mr. Tabler and other Middle East experts said, it was
important to remember that basic political shifts anywhere can take
decades or generations. The Prague Spring of 1968 may have failed, for
example, but it was the precursor to the changes in Eastern Europe that
inevitably led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The European revolutions of 1848, a series of popular upheavals that
were the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history,
affected more than 50 countries but soon collapsed under the repression
of military forces loyal to royalties and aristocracies. Nonetheless
they sowed the seeds of progressive political ideas that would help
shape European history for the next hundred years.
Political historians said that given the long and repressive successions
of autocracies among Arab countries in the Middle East, the convulsions
now under way in Egypt and elsewhere were painful but in many ways
understandable.
“The old regional order has gone, the new regional order is being drawn
in blood and it is going to take a long time,” said Sarkis Naoum, a
political analyst at Lebanon’s An Nahar newspaper. He said that the same
political stagnation caused by decades of autocratic rule that led to
the uprisings also left Arab countries ill-equipped to benefit from them
to build new governments.
“All the people in those countries lived under similar suppression
despite the differences in their regimes, so the uprisings were
contagious,” he said. “But nobody in Syria, Libya, Egypt or Tunisia who
wanted to get rid of the regime was prepared for what came next.”
Mona Yacoubian, a senior Middle East adviser at the Stimson Center, a
nonpartisan research organization in Washington, said it was premature
to interpret the events in Egypt as the definitive demise of the
revolutionary ideals that have been upending the region. But she said it
was difficult to see any ray of optimism.
“I am not writing these transitions off — I just think we’re heading into a period of extreme unrest,” she said. “If Egypt descends into widespread instability, chaos or civil war, the implications are huge for Arab transitions.”
Witness Account Of Egypt Violence Describes Chaos And Blood
Reuters
|
Posted: 08/14/2013 11:22 am EDT | Updated: 08/14/2013 2:44 pm EDT
By Yasmine Saleh and Tom Finn
CAIRO, Aug 14 (Reuters) - First came the tear gas, the bulldozers and the flames. Then came the bullets and the blood.
Egypt's security forces arrived after dawn on Wednesday to disperse the camp where thousands of Islamists have held vigil for six weeks. Helicopters roared above. Police fired tear gas into the crowd. Armoured bulldozers knocked down the makeshift walls made of sandbags and piles of rocks.
Inside, thousands of supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi were waking up into panic. Reuters correspondent Yasmine Saleh reached the camp shortly after the assault began, to hear desperate residents reciting Koranic verse and screaming "God help us! God help us!"
Masked police in dark uniforms were pouring out of police vans with sticks in one hand and tear gas bombs in the other. They tore down tents and set others ablaze.
"They smashed through our walls. Police and soldiers, they fired tear gas at children. We are peaceful, no weapons, we didn't fire a shot, we threw stones. They continued to fire at protesters even when we begged them to stop," said Saleh Abdulaziz, 39, a secondary school teacher clutching a bleeding wound on his head.
After shooting began, wounded and dead lay on the streets near pools of blood. An area of the camp that had been a playground and art exhibit for the children of protesters was turned into a war-zone field hospital.
Seven dead bodies were lined up in the street, one of a teenager whose skull was smashed, with blood pouring from the back of his head.
At another location in Cairo, Reuters reporter Abdul Moneim Haikal was in a crowd of Mursi supporters when he heard bullets whizzing past and hitting walls.
The crowd dived to the ground for cover. When Haikal looked up he saw blood gushing from the skull of a man next to him, killed by a bullet to the head. Police were firing from armoured vehicles across the street.
At the Western entrance to the main sit-in as the assault was under way, Reuters reporter Tom Finn saw troops turn away ambulances sent to evacuate the wounded. A woman in a pink hijab stood in front of the soldiers holding up her ID card and screaming: "I'm a doctor, I'm a doctor let me through!"
There were 50 or so pro-Mursi supporters behind her, mostly middle-aged men. Some were crying and had blood on their arms and faces. One man named Yusuf said he had seen his son injured on TV and was trying to get in to find him.
Three ambulances arrived, their sirens wailing. Men began banging on the back of the ambulances shouting "Let them through!" The soldiers turned the ambulances back and fired tear gas canisters at the men.
BLOOD ON THE WALLS
Later at the eastern side of the camp, Finn saw tents burning. There was a near-continuous rattle of machinegun fire; most of it sounded like it was coming from balconies above.
Mursi supporters, mainly bearded men in their mid-thirties, were sawing branches of trees and piling them onto a huge fire to counter the effect of tear gas. Men were arranging piles of stones around pools of blood on the ground. Others were trying to reassemble the walls that bulldozers had smashed down.
Protesters were smashing up the pavement and hurling rocks at the police.
A woman in a blue hijab was crying as she handed out gas masks. The injured were ferried out of the camp on stretchers and on the backs of motorbikes. One man was bleeding so badly that blood was dripping through the stretcher.
The wounded and dead were brought to a field hospital in a building beside the mosque, hot and chaotic and rammed with people screaming and shouting. Blood was streaked on the white walls. The injured were taken upstairs. The dead were carried in rugs to the basement.
Most of the dead were in one small room, laid out in a line head to toe, their heads wrapped in white bandages. Some were stacked on metal shelves. There was a 12-year-old boy bare-chested with tracksuit trousers laid out in the corridor, a bullet wound through his neck. Young men writhed in agony on shabby mattresses in corridors.
NO GOD BUT ALLAH
His mother was bent over him, rocking back and forth and silently kissing his chest. One of the nurses was sobbing on her hands and knees as she tried to mop up the blood with a roll of tissue. Reuters reporter Finn counted 29 bodies, mostly men in their 20s, with bullet wounds to their heads, necks and chests.
Throughout the day, the death toll was disputed, with Brotherhood figures reporting scores or even hundreds killed and the authorities giving smaller figures.
Journalists were among the dead, including an Egyptian reporter and a British TV cameraman. Reuters photographer Asmaa Waguih was shot in the foot and was taken to hospital.
Young Brotherhood supporter Majdi Isam, his hair matted with blood, said it was time for holy war.
"Is our blood this cheap? We are waging jihad now. God will have vengeance on these butchers. The streets are full of blood," he said.
By late afternoon, the campsite where Mursi's supporters had maintained their vigil for six weeks was empty. One man stood alone in the wreckage reciting the central tenet of Islam: "There is no God but Allah."
He wept, and then his voice broke off into silence. (Writing by Michael Georgy and Peter Graff)
Egyptian Security Forces Clear Pro-Morsi Sit-Ins, Dozens Dead (UPDATED)
Posted: 08/14/2013 4:36 am EDT | Updated: 08/14/2013 2:43 pm EDT
CAIRO --
Egypt's police and military stormed a pair of Muslim Brotherhood protest sites here early Wednesday morning, leaving scores of protesters dead and many more wounded as violence threatened to spill across the city.
While clashes at one Muslim Brotherhood protest site extended into their tenth hour, Egypt's military-backed government declared a one-month state of emergency. Across the city there were reports of small gun battles, and churches and government buildings being burned or seized. Vigilante and neighborhood watch groups, once a fixture of post-revolutionary Cairo, were formed late in the day.
The exact number killed in the storming of the sites -- the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Nasr City and another one in Nahda Square -- is unknown, but the Ministry of Health has reported a death toll of 149, while reporters on the scene inside Rabaa counted more than 100 bodies and expected the number to go up. More than 1,400 people have been injured, according to Reuters.
Mohammed El Baradei, a liberal politician who had joined the military-backed government as vice president, announced later Wednesday he would resign in response to the crackdown. El-Baradei was a leading figure working within the government in recent days to try to prevent the military from taking such action.
Demonstrators have been camped out at the sites for more than a month, protesting the military's decision to remove President Mohammed Morsi from office. In that time, they have constructed sophisticated tents, a pharmacy and a large stage.
As unrest spread across Egypt Wednesday -- especially in Christian areas of the Upper Nile, where several churches reportedly came under attack from angry Muslim Brotherhood supporters -- Mohammed al-Beltagi, a leader of the Brotherhood movement, appeared on television to urge his followers to rise up against the country's military leadership. He particularly called out Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the armed forces.
"I swear by God that if you stay in your homes, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will embroil this country so that it becomes Syria," al-Beltagi said, according to Reuters. "Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will push this nation to a civil war so that he escapes the gallows."
A Brotherhood-linked media group later reported that al-Beltagi's 17-year-old daughter, Asmaa, was among those killed in the clashes.
Within two hours of the storming at 7 a.m., large crowds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters had gathered along Nasr Street, about a kilometer away from the entrance to Rabaa, where hundreds of police and army officers had gathered. Massive reinforcements on both sides kept arriving all morning.
At a staging area for ambulances, on Nozha Street just off Nasr Street, bodies streamed out of the clashes zone. By 10:30 a.m., ambulances were leaving for a hospital nearly every five minutes.
An ambulance driver told HuffPost they couldn't get closer to the clashes because the tear gas made it impossible for them to work, and they were afraid their cars would be trapped.
"Is this the democracy everyone talked about?" a man pleaded, as he watched an injured protester be placed in an ambulance. "The army shooting people in the streets? Is this what we were promised?"
Residents of the neighborhood, who have grown fatigued by more than a month of protests, gathered at the Addas Aqad intersection to chant slogans for the army -- "The people, the army, one hand" -- and swarmed as injured protesters and policemen were carried away from the sit in.
One block away, Muslim Brotherhood supporters gathered to face off with the police, lighting small fires in the street and chanting, "The army, Sisi, dirty hands."
Periodically, police fired barrages of tear gas and what sounded like machine gun fire down the street toward the Brotherhood supporters, forcing them back toward El Nozha street, and into cover behind cars parked nearby.
Protesters leaving the site held up unfired rifle rounds and said, "This is our Egyptian army." It was unclear whether police were firing real ammunition or rubber bullets.
Demonstrators inside Rabaa were still holding out -- and hiding out -- as the barrage of tear gas and ammunition continued into the late afternoon. There were few signs that the injured could be moved out of field hospitals inside Rabaa, and reporters on the scene said they counted dozens of dead bodies in the makeshift morgues there.
In an alley near the clashes, a skinny 22-year-old resident in shorts and a T-shirt stood holding a white flower, staring mournfully at the scene. He declined to give his name, but said he had recently served in the army and was due for another term.
"I love the Egyptian army," the man said, "but what they are doing, killing protesters, it's against humanity."
Egypt’s Assault on Protesters Kills Scores
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
CAIRO — Egyptian security forces killed scores of protesters and wounded
hundreds of others on Wednesday in a daylong assault on two sit-ins by
Islamist supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, that set off
waves of violence in the capital, Cairo, and across the country.
By afternoon, the interim government appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah
el-Sisi had declared a one-month state of emergency across the country,
suspending the right to a trial or due process. The declaration returned
Egypt to the state of virtual martial law that prevailed for three
decades under President Hosni Mubarak before he was forced to step down
in 2011.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the interim vice president and a Nobel Prize-winning
former diplomat who had lent his reputation to convincing the West of
the military-appointed government’s democratic intentions, resigned in
protest, a spokeswoman said.
By late afternoon, the Egyptian health minister had put the number
killed in violence across the country at about 130, including at least
four policemen, and said about 900 had been injured. But the large
number of dead and critically injured Egyptians whom reporters for The
New York Times saw moving through various makeshift field hospitals in
Cairo indicated that the final death toll would climb much higher.
At least one protester was burned alive in his tent. Many others were
shot in the head and chest. Some of the dead appeared to be in their
early teens, and young women assisting in a field hospital had stains on
the hems of their abayas from the pools of blood covering the floor.
The government imposed a 7 p.m. curfew across much of the country.
Clashes and gunfire broke out even in well-heeled precincts of Cairo far
from the sit-ins, and by afternoon streets across the capital were
deserted. Outside Cairo, mobs of Islamists angry about the crackdown
attacked a police station in the Giza governorate, burned down at least
two churches in rural southern Egypt, and raged through the streets of
Alexandria and other cities.
After a six-week standoff with the demonstrators, the scale and
brutality of the attack — with armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas,
snipers, live ammunition and birdshot — appeared to extinguish any hope
of a political reconciliation that might persuade Mr. Morsi’s Islamist
supporters to participate in a renewed democratic process under the
auspices of the military-appointed government.
Instead, the crackdown was the clearest sign yet that the old Egyptian police state was re-emerging in full force, defying the protests of liberal members of the interim cabinet, Western threats of a cutoff of aid or loans, and the risk of a prolonged backlash of violence by Islamists angry about the theft of their democratic victories. It was a level of violence that might have crushed the January 2011 uprising that ousted Mr. Mubarak if military and police forces had unleashed it at that time, although back then the security forces faced a broader spectrum of protesters before the struggles over the political transition divided the Islamists and their opponents.
Tens of thousands of Morsi supporters had moved into the protest camps,
many with their families. The fatalities in the attack included the
17-year-old daughter of a prominent Islamist lawmaker in the dissolved
Parliament, Mohamed el-Beltagy.
“This is the beginning of a systematic crackdown on the Muslim
Brotherhood, other Islamists and other opponents of a military coup,”
said Emad Shahin, a professor of political science at the American
University in Cairo. “It is an attempt to begin a new phase of a police
state under military control behind a civilian facade — this is what
they are trying to do.”
As for the American threats to cut off aid or block international loans,
Professor Shahin said, no Egyptians — generals, liberals, Islamists or
scholars — ever took them seriously. “In the end, the West will back the
winning side,” he said. “That is how dictators think, and to a certain
extent it is true.”
A spokesman for President Obama said the United States was continuing to
review the $1.5 billion in aid it gives Egypt, most of it in the form
of military equipment. The spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the violence
“runs directly counter to pledges from the interim government to pursue
reconciliation” with the Islamists.
He said the United States condemned the renewal of the state of
emergency and urged respect for basic rights, like the freedom of
assembly and peaceful demonstrations. But he stopped short of writing
off the interim government, and said the United States would continue to
remind the government of its promises and urge it “to get back on
track.”
The Islamists vowed to continue their fight. Speaking to journalists
after the death of his daughter, Mr. Beltagy, the Islamist
parliamentarian, declared, “The police state has come to an end,” and
asserted that Egyptians across the country would rise up to defend
democracy. The dead gave their lives “for the cause of God, for
Egyptians to lead lives of dignity and honor.”
The attack began about 7 a.m. when a circle of police officers began
firing tear gas at the protest camps and plowing down tents with
bulldozers. The Egyptian Interior Ministry had said it planned to choke
off the protests gradually, at first by cutting off supplies of food and
water, blocking new entry to the sites and leaving one safe exit for
those who sought to leave.
But by about 8 a.m., the smaller sit-in, near Cairo University, had been
demolished in a cloud of tear gas. At the larger sit-in, near the Rabaa
al-Adawiya mosque, several thousand appeared trapped inside with no
safe exit as snipers fired down on those attempting to flee, and riot
police officers with tear gas and birdshot closed in from all sides.
There was no evidence that the Islamists had stockpiled weapons inside
the encampment, as Egyptian state media had claimed. Instead, Islamists
converging on Rabaa from around Cairo hurriedly broke pavement into
rocks or mixed Molotov cocktails for hurling at the police. A few were
armed with makeshift clubs, or sought to use garbage pail lids or even a
swimming kickboard as shields.
For a time in the late afternoon, the Islamists succeeded in pushing the
police back far enough to create an almost safe passage to a hospital
building on the edge of what remained of their camp. They had moved cars
into place as fortifications, and two long rows of men were passing
stones hand-to-hand to try to build new barricades.
The passage was safe except for a roughly 20-yard stretch in front of
the hospital doors, where snipers still fired down from both sides. A
series of Islamist marchers from around the city were able to enter the
encampment, bolstering its numbers even as the shooting continued.
But shortly before dusk, soldiers and police officers made a renewed
push, seizing control of the hospital and tearing down the last tents
and central stage erected at the core of the camp. The protesters had
nowhere left to hide, said Morad Ali, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman who
had been inside the camp, and they were forced at last to flee.
Journalists were also caught in the violence. Sky News, the British
satellite television service, said one of its veteran cameramen, Mick
Deane, was killed. The circumstances were not clear.
Mohamed Soltan, a spokesman for the protesters, told Al Jazeera that a
cameraman working with the protesters had been shot and killed by a
sniper while filming on a stage. There was no official confirmation of
the shooting.
Egyptian state television sought to play down the police violence,
beginning the day with reports that the camps were being cleared “in a
highly civilized way.” Later, state television broadcast footage of what
appeared to be an Islamist wielding an assault rifle.
After an emergency meeting in the midday, the interim government issued a
statement praising the security forces for their courage and restraint
while blaming the Islamists for any loss of life.
“The government holds these leaders fully responsible for any spilled
blood, and for all the rioting and violence going on,” the statement
said.
The government also renewed its pledge to pursue a military-based
political blueprint for the country’s future in “a way that strives not
to exclude any party from participation.”
Cairo erupts into violence as security crushes protest camp
At least 149 people were killed in Cairo when authorities broke up a pro-Muslim Brotherhood protest. The operation touched off attacks across the country.
By Kristen Chick, Correspondent / August 14, 2013
Cairo
Security forces attacked two protest camps full of supporters of the ousted president early this morning, killing dozens of people and sending Egypt into a fresh spiral of violence. Attacks on churches and police stations, as well as violent clashes between citizens and police, spread throughout Egypt.
The military-backed interim government declared a state of emergency and evening curfew as the death toll, more than 149 people by the afternoon, rose. Clashes continued at the largest protest camp and elsewhere in the capital and Egypt through late in the day.
The police crackdown and the wave of violence following it, including multiple attacks on Christians, marks a turn toward a dangerous new chapter of the political crisis that has been simmering since the military deposed former President Mohamed Morsi last month.
“They want to finish this demonstration that is supporting the legitimate president Mohamed Morsi,” said Ahmed el Hawary, a Morsi supporter who was trying to block police from passing near the site of the main protest camp this morning. Gunfire echoed and a huge plume of smoke rose from the site, as he continued, “They will succeed in finishing this but we're expecting civil war in Egypt, in every place, between the army and police and the people.”
The decision to disperse the protests has opened myriad new challenges for the military and interim government . The wave of attacks across the country, and the pressure the interim government is likely to be under for the crackdown, is expected to alter the transition plan for a return to elected government that was outlined last month.
“This interim government has chosen a fully securitized approach to this political crisis, and while it likely has robust popular backing, it is not going to quell the dissent and is going to precipitate violent reprisals and insurgent style attacks throughout the country, with a particular emphasis on sectarian reprisals,” says Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt expert at the Century Foundation. “The possibility for near term deescalation is pretty bleak… and whatever ambitious timelines for transition that were laid out on the original roadmap are going to have to be shelved.”
Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, a deputy vice president in the interim government who had helped garner international support and had opposed a crackdown on the protests, resigned today. In a letter to the military-appointed interim president he wrote "It has become difficult for me to continue bearing responsibility for decisions that I do not agree with and whose consequences I fear."
A new wave of martyrs
Following weeks of warnings, police began clearing the camps early this morning, using bulldozers, tear gas, and live gunfire. The sit-ins were filled with Morsi supporters, some families with children, who had vowed to stay until he was reinstated. While police overpowered the smaller camp in eastern Cairo within hours, clashes continued this afternoon at the larger camp in the Nasr City neighborhood.
Police blocked roads leading to the protest, and those inside say they were besieged and shot at from nearby rooftops. The entrance to the field hospital, where dozens of bloodied bodies lined the floor, came under fire, preventing the safe evacuation of the wounded, said those inside the hospital. As evening fell, eyewitnesses reported that police raided the hospital and police were allowing some protesters to leave the square.
Around the perimeter of the encampment, Morsi supporters clashed with police. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said in a statement that it had only used tear gas, but gunshot wounds in six dead bodies lined up in a mosque near the police lines told a different story. The mosque was turned into a hospital as police and protesters fought nearby and dead and wounded were brought inside. One doctor, his green scrubs soaked in sweat, worked desperately to save a severely wounded man who struggled to breathe.
Volunteers yelled “Martyr!” as they brought in a body and laid it on the green carpeted floor next to the others, then covered it with a sheet. A family gathered around one of the bodies, crying and wailing as they cradled the head of their dead loved one.
Nearby, Maged Mohy's cheeks were wet with tears as he grieved for his friend Maged Ahmed Youssef, under a sheet nearby. “We hate the Egyptian police,” he said. “We hate Sisi and his supporters," he said, referring to army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who executed Morsi's ouster. "I wish to see Sisi and all his supporters killed like this.”
A man read the names of the dead, calling them martyrs, over the mosque's loudspeakers. Outside,crowds chanted “Islamic! Islamic!” as they rallied the protesters facing police. Karam Risk, who received a birdshot wound in his chest, sat in the shade, resting.
“We are fighting for freedom, for dignity, for our voice,” he said. “And we will win. We will put an end to this today. This is not for my freedom, but for my daughter's.”
Scapegoats
Outside Cairo, those angered by the crackdown clashed with police, attacked police stations, and burned churches. Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher for the Egyptian Initiative on Personal Rights, says churches were attacked in the city of Suez and throughout southern Egypt, including Fayoum, Minya, the village of Delga, and Sohag, where a large church was set on fire. Christian homes and businesses were also attacked in Assiut and the province of Minya, he says. He expects the violence to worsen.
Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist figures have repeatedly accused Christians of fomenting the anti-Morsi protests, stoking anger and bigotry against Christians. Earlier this week, a speaker on stage at the protest camp blamed Christians for betraying Egypt. After Morsi's ouster, Christians were attacked in southern Egypt, where they make up a larger percentage of the population and sectarian violence is common.
Muslim Brotherhood leader Amr Darrag says the Brotherhood condemned violence against Christians, and suggested the attacks on churches were carried out by security forces in an effort to smear Islamists. Mr. Ibrahim said local priests blamed them on Islamists and Morsi supporters.
The police crackdown will not stop the protesters, Mr. Darrag says. “What is happening today is not just happening to the Brotherhood. This is a full war against democracy. The masses in the streets are more determined to stay and open new locations for sit ins, and keep on peacefully protesting until they get what they are asking for.”
The standoff began when the military removed Morsi on July 3, after massive nationwide protests calling for him to step down. Since then, the military has appointed an interim president and the interim government has laid out a roadmap for new elections.
But the Brotherhood and Morsi supporters have camped out and refused to negotiate or participate in the political process, insisting that Morsi must first be reinstated. The public, frustrated with his refusal to govern inclusively and his failure to fix the failing economy, had largely turned against Morsi. Many are now cheering the crackdown on his supporters.
In the street near the larger protest camp, local residents cursed the Morsi supporters who put up roadblocks to hamper police. As the protesters wailed that those inside the camp were being killed, one resident, who refused to give his name, said “Good. Let all of them die there.”
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