Death toll rises in Egypt protests
The number of people killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces in the wake of a deadly football riot rose to 11 today, security officials said, as demonstrations continued in Cairo.
As well as five killed in Suez, there were five protesters reported dead in Cairo, according to a security official and a volunteer doctor, along with the security officer killed by a police vehicle.
Protesters are keeping up their calls for an end to military rule and retribution for those killed in the post-game violence on Wednesday.
Several hundred protested in the capital’s Tahrir Square and near the interior ministry today, demanding police reforms. Others chanted for the execution of Egypt’s military ruler who has been accused of mismanaging the country’s transition to democracy.
The protesters are also angry with the police, accusing security forces of failing to prevent an attack and stampede after the football game in the Mediterranean city of Port Said that killed 74 people.
It was Egypt’s deadliest football riot and the world’s worst football violence in 15 years.
It also highlighted the inability, and some say unwillingness, of Egypt’s security forces to prevent such attacks in the year since former president Hosni Mubarak’s removal.
Yesterday, security forces in the port city of Suez opened fire on a crowd of several thousand outside the police headquarters, killing five people, a police official said.
Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported the victims ranged in age between 18 and 21, and that the most recent victim died today of a gunshot wound he sustained the previous day.
Two protesters died yesterday in Cairo, where security forces used tear gas and birdshot to disperse thousands rallying outside the interior ministry.
Dozens of field hospitals were set up in streets near the ministry to assist hundreds of cases of suffocation from tear gas inhalation.
A security officer died after an armoured police vehicle ran him over in the mayhem outside the ministry yesterday, the security official said.
There have been accusations that plainclothes officers took part in the football riot, and some have alleged that riot police intentionally allowed the melee in Port Said to happen to retaliate against fans of the visiting team Al-Ahly who played a key role in clashes with security forces during the uprising that toppled Mubarak last February.
MPs have accused the interior minister of “negligence”.
The violence in Port Said began after home team Al-Masry pulled off a 3-1 upset win over Cairo’s Al-Ahly, Egypt’s most powerful club. Al-Masry fans stormed the field, rushing past lines of police to attack Al-Ahly supporters.
Survivors described a nightmarish scene in the stadium. Police stood by doing nothing, they said, as Al-Masry fans attacked Al-Ahly supporters, stabbing them, undressing them and throwing them off the stands. Others died from the stampede down a narrow corridor after the stadium’s gate, which was locked from the outside, was forced open by the crowd.
Military rulers have declared three days of mourning after the incident and the country’s leading religious figure, Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb of Al-Azhar mosque, cancelled today’s celebrations marking the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.
Protesters, rights groups and several newly elected members of parliament have called on the country’s military leader, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who served as Mubarak’s defence minister for 20 years and took power after the president’s removal, to immediately transfer power to a civilian administration. Some are also calling on presidential elections to be held in April rather than June.
