Scotfella: Secret police blamed as peace protesters are gunned down in the siege of Cairo

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Secret police blamed as peace protesters are gunned down in the siege of Cairo

By NICK FAGGE and DAVID WILLIAMS
Last updated at 9:49 AM on 3rd February 2011

More than 1,500 injured in overnight clashes between democracy protesters and Mubarak supporters
Rocks and concrete blocks hurled at pro-democracy demonstration
World leaders call for calm as situation spirals out of control

At least three anti-government protesters in Egypt were shot dead after gunfire rained down on Cairo's Tahrir Square in violent overnight clashes.

Protest organiser Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried towards an ambulance.

More than 1,500 people were injured in the latest violence, which came before dawn, as protesters remained in the street through the night following a day of clashes between supporters of President Hosni Mubarak and dissidents.

Overnight: Pro-government demonstrators, bottom, clashed with anti-government demonstrators as a palm tree burns from a firebomb in Tahrir Square, Cairo

Clashes: The two factions face off against each other from behind make shift shields and barriers

Message: Anti-government demonstrators remain in Tahrir Square after a violent night with their aims unchanged

At dawn: The situation appears calm this morning after a night of violence

Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday: 'If it turns out that the regime in any way has been sponsoring or tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable.'

A Foreign Office charter flight will leave Cairo for London's Gatwick Airport later with more than 200 passengers expected on board.

The army was accused of doing nothing to stop the bloody chaos around Tahrir Square in the country’s capital, the focus of the previously peaceful demonstrations.

In the first terrifying clashes between rival factions since the pro-democracy protests started last week, stones were torn from the pavements to use as missiles.

Protesters dragged attackers from the camels and horses – normally used to give tourists a ride around the square – and beat them with sticks, in at least two cases smashing heads against the paving.

The sound of automatic weapons crackled over the square above the screams of the mob and the chilling cries of the injured, many suffering from machete and razor wounds.

Charge: Pro-government demonstrators, one on a camel, go into battle in Cairo's Tahrir Square

Mubarak supporters charge demonstrators with camels

Battlefield: It wasn't just camels that took to the streets. Some demonstrators rode into battle on horseback

One man knelt helpless on the floor, his head spurting blood, while those around him beat him; another bloodied protester was dragged desperately from a mob by two men, both themselves bleeding from head wounds.

A man found hiding in the back of an army lorry was kicked mercilessly and then dumped head first over the side for a further beating.

All around, battles raged across a frontline that formed next to the Egyptian Museum, the treasury of pharaonic antiquities and mummies.

A mosque was turned into a makeshift hospital, with one doctor describing the scenes that greeted him on arrival as a ‘resembling a battlefield... carnage’. Pitched battles continued from behind makeshift barricades into a darkness punctured only by the few remaining street lights and, at one awful moment, by two protesters running with their clothes ablaze.

Missiles: Stones fly through the air as supporters of President Hosni Mubarak attack previously peaceful protesters in Liberation Square

Bloodshed: Protesters comfort each other (left and right) after being injured during the protest while a veil-clad woman gathers rocks in her hands ready hurl

Anarchy: The opposing sides square off amid army tanks as the protests became increasingly volatile

Masses: Hundreds of thousands of people once more massed in Cairo's central square but this time protests turned ugly

'IT'S INCREDIBLY EXCITING' - CLEGG

Nick Clegg (pictured) was accused of schoolboy diplomacy yesterday after describing events in Egypt as ‘incredibly exciting’.

The Lib Dem leader was trying to sound enthusiastic about the revolution sweeping the country. But his words began to sound unwise as the protests turned violent.

Hundreds had already been killed or beaten when the Deputy Prime Minister told ITV Daybreak: ‘It is incredibly exciting what is going on, it reminds me so much of the time when the Berlin Wall fell, the power of the people out on the streets, in a regime which two weeks ago everybody thought was one of the most stable regimes in the region.’

Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander criticised Mr Clegg’s ‘schoolboy diplomacy’. But a source close to Mr Clegg said he was simply ‘acknowledging that the principle of bringing democracy to a country as significant as Egypt was exciting’.

At least four buildings were set alight while Mubarak supporters, who were reported to have sealed-off the square, trapping anti-government supporters inside, took over control of roof tops to hurl debris and petrol bombs on the crowds below.

The clashes came hours after Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, had gone on TV to reject demands he step down immediately, saying he would serve out the remaining seven months of his term but would not stand again.

Last night all eyes were on the military to see how they would react after earlier asking protesters to disperse ‘for the good of the country’ so life could return to normal. For two days they had allowed protests to grow and many anti-Mubarak supporters believed the president’s followers – their numbers swollen by hated police in plain clothes – had orchestrated the attack to provide the military with a reason to crack down.

Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei said he feared ‘it will turn into a bloodbath’ and accused the government of using ‘scare tactics’ to cling on to power.

The clashes marked a dangerous new phase in Egypt’s upheaval – the first significant time that pro-Mubarak supporters have rallied.

Significantly, 20,000 pro-government demonstrators also held an angry but mostly peaceful rally across the Nile from Tahrir, saying that Mubarak’s concessions were enough.

Having the rival sides on the streets is particularly worrying because there do not appear to be anywhere near enough police or military to control resurgent violence.

Walking to the square in the morning through the throng of Mubarak supporters there had appeared no sign of the violence that was to about to erupt.

Men waving flags and women holding banners of the ageing dictator told of their fears of what would happen to Egypt if he were to go.

One man, Osman Hussein, screamed in broken English that this country of 80million would become a fundamentalist anti-Western state like Iran.

A few hundred yards away an estimated 10,000 anti-Mubarak protesters had massed in Tahrir to reject his speech as ‘too little too late’ and renew demands he leave immediately. But as the afternoon curfew approached around 3,000 Mubarak supporters smashed their way through a human chain of anti-government protesters defending those in the square and the chaos erupted.

March: Pro-democracy supporters descend on Liberation Square

Anti-government demonstrators break bricks off the floor to use during clashes with Mubarak supporters

Formidable: Thousands of Mubarak's supporters marched through the streets (left) while their opponents resorted to hacking bricks apart with sticks to make more projectiles

Arrests: Pro-Mubarak protesters captured by anti-government supporters are handed over to the army

The army, which had been keeping the two sides apart earlier in the day, largely did not intervene. Many protesters – who for days have showered the military with love for its neutral stance – now accused the troops of intentionally allowing the attackers into the square.

The effects of the protests are already being felt throughout the region and there are fears it will spread, with Jordan forced to promise reforms and the Yemeni president announcing yesterday he would not seek another term in office.

Yemen leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is allied to the U.S. and has been in power for nearly 32 years, spoke on the eve of mass rallies that the opposition has called today in all the country’s provinces.

Saleh, whose current term in office expires in 2013, promised that his son would not seek to succeed him. He has already tried to defuse simmering tensions in Yemen by raising salaries for the army, ordering income tax to be slashed and instructing his government to control prices.