CAIRO, July 28, 2013
AP
AP Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohamed Morsy during a protest rally in Cairo. File photo
Egypt’s interior minister on Sunday pledged to deal decisively with any attempts to destabilise the country, a thinly veiled warning to supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsy occupying two squares in Cairo in a month-long stand-off with the security forces.
The warning came as authorities said that the death toll in weekend clashes between Mr. Morsy’s Islamist backers and security forces near one of those sit-ins had reached 72, in the deadliest single outbreak of violence since the July 3 military coup.
“I assure the people of Egypt that the police are determined to maintain security and safety to their nation and are capable of doing so,” Mr. Mohammed Ibrahim told a graduation ceremony at the national police academy. “We will very decisively deal with any attempt to undermine stability,” said Mr. Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police.
Mr. Ibrahim’s comments added pressure on Mr. Morsy’s backers three weeks after the Islamist president was ousted in a military coup that followed days of street protests by millions calling on him to step down.
On Friday, millions again took to the streets in a show of support for Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the military chief who ousted Mr. Morsy. Those protests were in response to Abdel-Fattah’s call for a mandate for him and the police to tackle what he called violence and potential terrorism.
Mr. Ibrahim, who had been appointed by Mr. Morsy, took an uncompromising stance in a news conference on Saturday, accusing the pro-Morsy side of provoking bloodshed to win sympathy and suggesting that authorities could move against the two main pro-Morsy protest camps- one outside the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque in eastern Cairo and another in Nahda Square near the main campus of Cairo university.
“Soon we will deal with both sit-ins,” Mr. Ibrahim said.
On Tuesday, Khaled el-Khateeb, head of the ministry’s emergency and intensive care department, said that beside the 72 killed in the Cairo clashes, eight were killed in clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria also over the weekend.
A total of 792 people were wounded in both incidents, which spanned Friday and early Saturday, he said.
The Cairo violence took place when pro-Morsy protesters sought to expand their sit-in camp by moving onto a nearby main boulevard, only to be confronted by police and unidentified armed men in civilian clothes.
Civilians, sometimes with weapons, are frequently seen alongside police in Cairo demonstrations. In some cases, they appear to be police auxiliaries or plainclothesmen, in others residents who back the security forces.
Authorities concede that the vast majority of the dead in Cairo were demonstrators, but the Interior Ministry says some policemen were wounded and it is not clear if civilians who sided with police were among the dead.
The extent of the bloodshed pointed to a rapidly building confrontation between the country’s two camps, sharply divided over the coup that removed Egypt’s first freely elected president following protests by millions of Egyptians demanding he step down.
Officials from Mr. Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood and their allies decried what they called a new “massacre” against their side, only weeks after July 8 clashes with army troops in Cairo that left more than 50 Morsi supporters dead.
Keywords: Egypt political crisis, Egypt ousted President Mohamed Morsy, sit-in rallies, Mohammed Ibrahim, Egypt Interior Minister
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