Egypt offices stormed as toll rises

The Muslim Brotherhood put the death toll at a staggering 2,600 and the injured at around 10,000 – figures that are extremely high in light of TV footage.

An Associated Press reporters saw the buildings – a two-storry colonial style villa and a four-storey administrative building – set ablaze today.

The Giza government offices are on the Pyramids Road on the west bank of the River Nile.

State TV blamed Morsi supporters for the fire. Its footage shows both structures burning with fire men evacuating employees from the larger building.

Tamarod, the youth movement that organised the mass rallies preceding Mr Morsi’s ousting on July 3, called for the creation of popular committees to protect government and private property.

The number of people injured in the clashes also rose, to 3,717.

The violence began when police moved to clear two sit-in camps in Cairo by supporters of Mr Morsi. The clashes there later spread to elsewhere in Cairo and a string of other cities.

The health ministry said 202 of the dead were killed in the larger of the two camps, in Cairo’s eastern Nasr City district.

The violence prompted the government to declare a nationwide, month-long state of emergency.

A nighttime curfew was imposed in Cairo, Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, and 12 provinces where violence broke out.

The crackdown drew widespread condemnation from the Muslim world and the West, including the US, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei resigned as the interim vice president in protest – a blow to the new military-backed leadership’s credibility.

“Today was a difficult day,” interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said in a televised address to the nation.

While he said he regretted the bloodshed, he offered no apologies for moving against the supporters of Mr Morsi, saying they were given ample warnings to leave and he had tried foreign mediation efforts.

Mr el-Beblawi said the government could not indefinitely tolerate a challenge to authority that the six-week-old protests represented.

“We want to see a civilian state in Egypt, not a military state and not a religious state,” he said.

The government has ordered the armed forces to support the police in restoring law and order and protect state facilities.

The leaders of Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood called the events a “massacre”. Several of them were detained as police swept through the two sit-in sites, scores of other Islamists were taken into custody, and the future of the once-banned movement was uncertain.

Backed by helicopters, police fired tear gas and used armoured bulldozers to plough into the barricades at the two protest camps in different sections of Cairo where the Morsi supporters had been camped since before he was ousted by the military on July 3.

Army troops did not take part in the two operations, which began shortly after 7am local time, although they provided security at the locations.

Near the site of one of the smashed encampments of Mr Morsi’s supporters in the eastern Nasr City district, an Associated Press reporter today saw dozens of blood soaked bodies stored inside a mosque. The bodies were wrapped in sheets and still unclaimed by families.

Relatives at the scene were uncovering the faces in an attempt to identify their loved ones. Many complained that authorities were preventing them from obtaining permits to bury their dead.

Victims’ names were scribbled on white sheets covering their bodies, some of which were charred. Posters of Mr Morsi were scattered on the floor.

“They accuse us of setting fire to ourselves. Then, they accuse us of torturing people and dumping their bodies. Now, they kill us and then blame us,” screamed a woman in a head-to-toe black niqab.

Omar Houzien, a volunteer helping families search for their loved ones, said the bodies were brought in from the Medical Centre at the sit-in camp site in the final hours of the police sweep because of fears that they would be burned.

A list plastered on the wall listed 265 names of those said to have been killed in the violence. Funerals for identified victims were expected to take place later today.

Meanwhile, a mass police funeral – with coffins draped in the white, red and black Egyptian flag – was held in Cairo for some of the 43 security troops killed in the clashes.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, led the mourners. A police band played funerary music as a sombre funeral procession moved with the coffins placed atop red fire engines.

Cairo, a city of some 18 million people, was uncharacteristically quiet today, with only a fraction of its usually hectic traffic and many stores and government offices shuttered. Many people hunkered down at home for fear of more violence. Banks and the stock market were closed.

The Brotherhood has called for fresh protests today, raising the spectre of renewed violence. However, there were no reports of any large gatherings by early afternoon.