rallies
Violence has broken out in Cairo where
defiant supporters of ousted President
Mohammed Morsi are protesting against
his removal from power, with up to 120
people reported dead.
Doctors at an Islamist-run field hospital
said another 1,000 had been injured in
the clashes, which broke out shortly
before pre-dawn prayers at a Cairo vigil
staged by backers of Mr Morsi.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague
condemned the killings. "I call on the
Egyptian authorities to respect the right of
peaceful protest, to cease the use of
violence against protesters, including live
fire, and to hold to account those
responsible," he said.
Gehad El-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood
spokesman, said the army had opened
fire on protesters who had spilled out of
the vigil on to a main thoroughfare. The
health ministry contested the figure of
120 killed – provided by the Muslim
Brotherhood – issuing a lower death toll
of 38. The state news agency MENA
quoted an unnamed security source as
saying only teargas was used to disperse
demonstrators.
But Mr Haddad said the victims had
suffered bullet wounds to their heads and
chests.
"They are not shooting to wound, they
are shooting to kill," Mr Haddad said.
Reuters and AFP correspondents reported
seeing dozens of bodies laid out on the
floor of the field hospital.
The new wave of bloodshed came as
hundreds of thousands of Egyptians
heeded a call by army chief General Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi to give him a popular
mandate to confront violence unleashed
by his July 3 overthrow of Egypt's first
freely elected president.
The Brotherhood mounted counter-
demonstrations, swelling a month-long
vigil in northern Cairo before violence
erupted. A Reuters reporter saw heavy
exchanges of gunfire in the early hours of
yesterday between security forces and
Morsi supporters, who tore up pavement
concrete to lob at police.
Earlier in the day the MENA state news
agency reported nine people killed in
violence nationwide and at least 200
wounded.
Most of those deaths were in Egypt's
second city of Alexandria, on the
Mediterranean coast, where hundreds of
people fought pitched battles, with
birdshot fired and men on rooftops
throwing stones at crowds below.
Several of those killed were stabbed,
hospital officials said, and at least one was
shot in the head.
News of the investigation against Mr
Morsi over his 2011 escape from jail
signalled a clear escalation in the
military's confrontation with the deposed
leader and his Islamist movement.
MENA said Mr Morsi, who has been held
incommunicado at an undisclosed military
facility since his overthrow, had been
ordered to be detained for 15 days
pending the inquiry.
Egypt's army-installed interior minister,
Mohamed Ibrahim, said month-old Cairo
vigils by Mr Morsi supporters would be
"brought to an end, soon and in a legal
manner," state-run al Ahram news
website reported.
On Facebook, the Brotherhood said the
army had stormed its vigil overnight,
triggering the violence. An army official,
who declined to be named, denied this.
He said the clashes were "near the
Brotherhood's sit-in area, but not at it.
There is and will not be any attempt to
attack the sit-in or evacuate it tonight."
The Brotherhood is bracing for a broad
crackdown by the army to wipe out a
movement that emerged from decades in
the shadows to take power after Egypt's
2011 Arab Spring uprising against autocrat
Hosni Mubarak, only to be deposed after
a year in government.
There is deepening alarm in the West
over the army's move against Mr Morsi,
which has triggered weeks of violence in
the influential Arab state bordering US
ally Israel. Close to 200 people have
died.
The country of 84 million people forms a
bridge between the Middle East and
North Africa and receives $1.5 billion a
year in mainly military aid from
Washington.
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