Heavy gunfire rings out in Cairo protest square
CAIRO
Sustained bursts of automatic weapons fire and powerful single
shots rattled into the square starting at around 4 a.m., and was
continuing more than an hour later.
Protest organizer Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of
three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance. He said
the gunfire came from at least three locations off in the distance
and that the Egyptian military, which has ringed the square with
tank squads for days to try to keep some order, did not intervene.
Footage from AP Television News showed two bodies being dragged
from the scene. The health minister did not answer a phone call
seeking confirmation of the deaths.
Throughout Wednesday, Mubarak supporters charged into the square
on horses and camels brandishing whips while others rained
firebombs from rooftops in what appeared to be an orchestrated
assault against protesters trying to topple Egypt's leader of 30
years. Three people died in that earlier violence and 600 were
injured.
The protesters accused Mubarak's regime of unleashing a force of
paid thugs and plainclothes police to crush their unprecedented
nine-day-old movement, a day after the 82-year-old president
refused to step down. They showed off police ID badges they said
were wrested from their attackers. Some government workers said
their employers ordered them into the streets.
Mustafa el-Fiqqi, a top official from the ruling National
Democratic Party, told The Associated Press that businessmen
connected to the ruling party were responsible for what happened.
The notion that the state may have coordinated violence against
protesters, who had kept a peaceful vigil in Tahrir Square for five
days, prompted a sharp rebuke from the Obama administration.
"If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it
should stop immediately," said White House Press Secretary Robert
Gibbs.
The clashes marked a dangerous new phase in Egypt's upheaval:
the first significant violence between government supporters and
opponents. The crisis took a sharp turn for the worse almost
immediately after Mubarak rejected the calls for him to give up
power or leave the country, stubbornly proclaiming he would die on
Egyptian soil.
His words were a blow to the protesters. They also suggest that
authorities want to turn back the clock to the tight state control
enforced before the protests began.
Mubarak's supporters turned up on the streets Wednesday in
significant numbers for the first time. Some were hostile to
journalists and foreigners. Two Associated Press correspondents and
several other journalists were roughed up in Cairo. State TV had
reported that foreigners were caught distributing anti-Mubarak
leaflets, apparently trying to depict the movement as
foreign-fueled.
After midnight, 10 hours after the clashes began, the two sides
were locked in a standoff at a street corner, with the anti-Mubarak
protesters hunkered behind a line of metal sheets hurling firebombs
back and forth with government backers on the rooftop above. The
rain of bottles of flaming gasoline set nearby cars and wreckage on
the sidewalk ablaze.
The scenes of mayhem were certain to add to the fear that is
already running high in this capital of 18 million people after a
weekend of looting and lawlessness and the escape of thousands of
prisoners from jails in the chaos.
Soldiers surrounding Tahrir Square fired occasional shots in the
air throughout the day but did not appear to otherwise intervene in
the fierce clashes and no uniformed police were seen. Most of the
troops took shelter behind or inside the armored vehicles and tanks
stationed at the entrances to the square.
"Why don't you protect us?" some protesters shouted at the
soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told
people to go home.
"The army is neglectful. They let them in," said Emad Nafa, a
52-year-old among the protesters, who for days had showered the
military with affection for its neutral stance.
Some of the worst street battles raged near the Egyptian Museum
at the edge of the square. Pro-government rioters blanketed the
rooftops of nearby buildings and hurled bricks and firebombs onto
the crowd below -- in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the
museum grounds. Plainclothes police at the building entrances
prevented anti-Mubarak protesters from storming up to stop them.
The two sides pummeled each other with chunks of concrete and
bottles at each of the six entrances to the sprawling plaza, where
10,000 anti-Mubarak protesters tried to fend off more than 3,000
attackers who besieged them. Some on the pro-government side waved
machetes, while the square's defenders filled the air with a
ringing battlefield din by banging metal fences with sticks.
In one almost medieval scene, a small contingent of pro-Mubarak
forces on horseback and camels rushed into the anti-government
crowds, trampling several people and swinging whips and sticks.
Protesters dragged some riders from their mounts, throwing them to
the ground and beating their faces bloody. The horses and camels
appeared to be ones used to give tourists rides around Cairo.
Dozens of men and women pried up pieces of the pavement with
bars and ferried the piles of ammunition in canvas sheets to their
allies at the front. Others directed fighters to streets needing
reinforcements.
The protesters used a subway station as a makeshift prison for
the attackers they managed to catch. They tied the hands and legs
of their prisoners and locked them inside. People grabbed one man
who was bleeding from the head, hit him with their sandals and
threw him behind a closed gate.
Some protesters wept and prayed in the square where only a day
before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of a quarter-million,
the largest demonstration so far.
Egyptian Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said three people
died and at least 611 were injured in Tahir Square. One of those
killed fell from a bridge near the square; Farid said the man was
in civilian clothes but may have been a member of the security
forces.
Farid did not say how the other two victims, both young men,
were killed. It was not clear whether they were government
supporters or anti-Mubarak demonstrators.
After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the
uprising in Tunisia took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a
once-unimaginable series of demonstrations across this nation of 80
million. For the past few days, protesters who camped out in Tahrir
Square reveled in a new freedom -- publicly expressing their hatred
for the Mubarak regime.
"After our revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it
for us," said Ahmed Abdullah, a 47-year-old lawyer in the square.
Another man shrieked through a loudspeaker: "Hosni has opened
the door for these thugs to attack us."
The pressure for demonstrators to clear the square mounted
throughout the day, beginning early when a military spokesman
appeared on state TV and asked them to disperse so life in Egypt
could get back to normal.
It was a change in attitude by the army, which for the past few
days had allowed protests to swell with no interference and even
made a statement saying they had a legitimate right to demonstrate
peacefully.
Then the regime began to rally its supporters in significant
numbers for the first time, demanding an end to the protest
movement. Some 20,000 Mubarak supporters held an angry but mostly
peaceful rally across the Nile River from Tahrir, responding to
calls on state TV.
They said Mubarak's concessions were enough. He has promised not
to run for re-election in September, named a new government and
appointed a vice president for the first time, widely considered
his designated successor.
They waved Egyptian flags, their faces painted with the
black-white-and-red national colors, and carried a large printed
banner with Mubarak's face as police officers surrounded the area
and directed traffic. They cheered as a military helicopter swooped
overhead.
They were bitter at the jeers hurled at Mubarak.
"I feel humiliated," said Mohammed Hussein, a 31-year-old
factory worker. "He is the symbol of our country. When he is
insulted, I am insulted."
Sayyed Ramadan, a clothing vendor said: "Eight days with no
security, safety, food or drink. I earn my living day by day. The
president didn't do anything. It is shame that we call him a dog."
Emad Fathi, 35, works as a delivery boy but since the
demonstrations, he has not gone to work.
"I came here to tell these people to leave," he said. "The
mosques were calling on people to go and support Mubarak," he
said.
The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to
force him out by Friday.
State TV said Vice President Omar Suleiman called "on the youth
to heed the armed forces' call and return home to restore order."
From the other side, senior anti-Mubarak figure Mohamed ElBaradei
demanded the military "intervene immediately and decisively to
stop this massacre."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with Suleiman to
condemn the violence and urge Egypt's government to hold those
responsible for it accountable, State Department spokesman P.J.
Crowley said.
Protesters had maintained a round-the-clock, peaceful vigil in
Tahrir Square since Friday night, when the military was first
deployed and police largely vanished from the streets.
After celebrating their biggest success yet in Tuesday's
demonstration, the crowd thinned out overnight. By morning a few
thousand protesters remained. Mubarak supporters began to gather at
the edges of the square a little after noon, and protesters formed
a human chain to keep them out.
In the early afternoon, around 3,000 pro-government
demonstrators broke through and surged among the protesters,
according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
They tore down banners denouncing the president, fistfights
broke out, and protesters grabbed Mubarak posters from the hands of
the supporters and ripped them to pieces.
From there, it escalated into outright street battles as
hundreds poured in to join each side.
The battle lines at each of the entrances surged back and forth
for hours. Each side's fighters stretched across the width of the
four-lane divided boulevard, hiding behind abandoned trucks and
holding sheets of corrugated metal as shields from the hail of
stones.
At the heart of the square, young men with microphones sought to
keep up morale. "Stand fast, reinforcements are on the way," said
one. "Youth of Egypt, be brave." Groups of bearded men lined up
to recite Muslim prayers before taking their turn in the line of
fire.
Bloodied young men staggered or were carried into makeshift
clinics set up in mosques and alleyways by the anti-government
side.
Women and men stood ready with water, medical cotton and
bandages as each wave returned. Scores of wounded were carried to a
makeshift clinic at a mosque near the square and on other side
streets, staffed by doctors in white coats. One man with blood
coming out of his eye stumbled into a side-street clinic.
As night fell, some protesters went to get food, a sign they
plan to dig in for a long siege. Hundreds more people from the
impoverished district of Shubra showed up later as reinforcements.
Wednesday's events suggest the regime aims to put an end of the
unrest to let Mubarak shape the transition as he chooses over the
next months. Mubarak has offered negotiations with protest leaders
over democratic reforms, but they have refused any talks until he
steps down.
As if to show the public the crisis was ending, the government
began to reinstate Internet service after days of an unprecedented
cutoff. State TV announced the easing of a nighttime curfew, which
now runs from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. instead of 3 p.m. to 8 a.m.