Cairo mosque gunfight as standoff ends
Print Edition
Supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi fought a gun battle with security forces in a Cairo mosque yesterday, while Egypt’s army-backed government considered banning his Muslim Brotherhood group.
Police later cleared Islamist protesters from the Al-Fath mosque. Security forces dragged supporters of Morsi from the mosque, passing through angry crowds who tried to beat the Islamists, calling them “terrorists.”
Witnesses reported gunmen shoot from a window of the mosque, where Brotherhood followers sheltered during ferocious confrontations in the heart of Cairo on Friday.
Another gunman was shown on television shooting from the mosque’s minaret and soldiers outside returning fire. It was not clear if anyone died in the latest clash — the fourth day of violence in Egypt, which has killed almost 800 people.
With anger rising on all sides, Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi proposed disbanding the Brotherhood, raising the stakes in a bloody struggle between the state and Islamists for control of the Arab world’s most populous nation. “We are not facing political divisions, we are facing a war being waged by extremists developing daily into terrorism,” presidential political adviser Mostafa Hegazy told reporters.
If Beblawi’s proposal to disband the Brotherhood is acted on, it would force the group underground and could herald large-scale arrests against its members placed outside the law.
The health ministry said 173 people died in clashes across Egypt on Friday, including 95 in central Cairo, after the Brotherhood called a “Day of Rage” to denounce a crackdown on its followers on Wednesday that killed at least 578 people.
Fifty-seven policemen died over the past three days, the interior ministry said.
Among those killed on Friday was a son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, shot dead close to al-Fath mosque, which was rapidly transformed into a makeshift morgue and a refuge for hundreds of Morsi’s supporters, looking to escape the bloodshed.
The building was surrounded overnight and police fired volleys of tear gas into the carpeted prayer hall in the early afternoon, filling the hall with billowing white smoke and leaving those inside gasping for breath.
Soon afterward gunshots rang out from both sides.
Egyptian authorities said they had rounded up more than 1,000 Islamists after Friday’s protests.
Security sources said Mohammed Al-Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaida leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, had also been detained.
“Friday was a very bad, ugly day. There were attacks on police stations, ministries. The situation is very bad,” the prime minister told reporters. “There will be no reconciliation with those whose hands have been stained with blood and who turned weapons against the state and its institutions.”
The Brotherhood won all five elections that followed the toppling the autocratic Hosni Mubarak.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says he removed Morsi from office on July 3 to protect the country from possible civil war.
Despite the bloodshed, the Islamist group has urged its supporters to take to the streets every day this coming week, but there was no sign of large rallies yesterday afternoon.
“Our rejection of the coup regime has become an Islamic, national and ethical obligation that we can never abandon,” said the Brotherhood, which accuses the military of plotting the downfall of Morsi to regain the levers of power.
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