Brotherhood vows uprising as Morsi supporters gunned down

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

At least 42 people were killed in Cairo on Monday, according to medical sources, when Islamist protesters angered by the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi were allegedly fired on at the Cairo military barracks where he is being held.

More than 300 were wounded in a sharp escalation of Egypt’s political crisis, and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood urged Egyptians to rise up against the army, which they accuse of a military coup to remove the elected leader.

In an official statement published by Al-Ahram Arabic news website, the army said an “armed terrorist group” attempted to break into the Republican Guard headquarters in the early hours of Monday and “attacked security forces.”

One officer died and 40 soldiers were injured, including seven in critical condition, the statement said.

However, various international news organizations reporting from the scene quoted witnesses as saying the protestors were unarmed when they were gunned down.

At a hospital near the Rabaa Adawia mosque where Islamists have camped out since Morsi was toppled last Wednesday, rooms were crammed with people wounded in the violence. Many of the sheets and clothes were heavily stained with blood.

The Brotherhood’s official spokesman, Gehad El-Haddad, who is at a pro-Morsi sit-in at a mosque near the scene, said shooting broke out in the early morning while Islamists were praying and staging a peaceful sit-in outside the barracks. AFP reported that the Egyptian prosecution has ordered the shutdown of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, the Freedom and Justice Party headquarters in Cairo.

As an immediate consequence, the ultra-conservative Islamist Nour party, which initially supported the military intervention, said it was withdrawing from stalled negotiations to form an interim government for the transition to fresh elections. “We wanted to avoid bloodshed, but now blood has been spilled. So now we want to announce that we will end all negotiations with the new authorities,” Nour added.

The rapidly deteriorating situation leaves the Arab world’s largest nation of 84 million people in a perilous state, with the risk of further enmity between people on either side of the political divide while an economic crisis deepens.

Abdelaziz Abdelshakua, from Sharqia Province northeast of Cairo, was wounded in his right leg with what he says was a live round.

“We were praying the dawn prayer and we heard there was shooting,” he said. He said an army officer assured them no one was shooting, then suddenly they were under fire from the direction of the Republican Guard.

“They shot us with teargas, birdshot, rubber bullets — everything. Then they used live bullets.”

Al Jazeera’s Egypt news channel broadcast footage of what appeared to be five men killed in the violence, and medics trying to revive a man at a makeshift clinic at a nearby pro-Mursi sit-in.

A Reuters journalist at the scene saw first aid helpers attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dying man. Wounded people were being ferried to the field hospital on motorbikes, given first aid treatment and taken away in ambulances.

The military overthrew Morsi on Wednesday after mass nationwide demonstrations led by youth activists demanding his resignation. The Brotherhood denounced the intervention as a coup and vowed peaceful resistance.

Military vehicles sealed off traffic in a wide area around Rabaa Adawia mosque. The army also closed two main bridges across the Nile River with armored vehicles.

Talks on forming a new government were already in trouble before Monday’s shooting, after the Nour Party rejected two liberal-minded candidates for prime minister proposed by interim head of state Adly Mansour.

Nour, Egypt’s second biggest Islamist party, which is vital to give the new authorities a veneer of Islamist backing, said it had withdrawn from the negotiations in protest at what it called the “massacre at the Republican Guard (compound)”.

“The party decided the complete withdrawal from political participation in what is known as the road map,” it said.

The military can ill afford a lengthy political vacuum at a time of violent upheaval and economic stagnation.

Scenes of running street battles between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators in Cairo, Alexandria and cities across the country have alarmed Egypt’s allies, including key aid donors the United States and Europe, as well as Israel, with which Egypt has had a U.S.-backed peace treaty since 1979.

Huge crowds numbering hundreds of thousands gathered in different parts of Cairo again on Sunday were peaceful, but nonetheless a reminder of the risks of further instability.

For many Islamists, the overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president was a bitter reversal that raised fears of a return to the suppression they endured for decades under autocratic rulers like Mubarak.

On the other side of the political divide, millions of Egyptians were happy to see the back of a leader they believed was orchestrating a creeping Islamist takeover of the state – a charge the Brotherhood has vehemently denied.

Washington has not condemned the military takeover or called it a coup, prompting suspicion within the Brotherhood that it tacitly supports the overthrow.

Obama has ordered a review to determine whether annual U.S. assistance of $1.5 billion, most of which goes to the Egyptian military, should be cut off as required by law if a country’s military ousts a democratically elected leader.

Egypt can ill afford to lose foreign aid. The country appears headed for a looming funding crunch unless it can quickly access money from overseas. The local currency has lost 11 percent of its value since late last year.

On Sunday, armed men launched a series of attacks on Sunday on security checkpoints in the north Sinai towns of Sheikh Zuweid and el-Arish close to Egypt’s border with Israel and the Gaza Strip, and one soldier was killed.

The attacks were part of a spike in violence in the lawless province since the overthrow of Morsi.

Gunmen in pickup trucks exchanged gunfire with soldiers and police in Sheikh Zuweid in the early hours of the morning, but there were no casualties, security sources said.

In two separate attacks by armed assailants on Sunday evening in el-Arish, one soldier was killed and a police officer wounded, security sources added.

The army arrested 11 suspected militants after another attack at a checkpoint south of el-Arish early on Monday, security sources said.

Hardline Islamists have launched sporadic attacks in North Sinai since the ouster of Mubarak in 2011 created a security vacuum in the region.