Egyptian army enters Cairo to enforce curfew under state of emergency.

Death toll from clashes up to 278

DEBKAfile Special Report August 14, 2013, 10:01 PM (IDT)

Egyptian security forces dismantled the two fortified pro-Morsi camps in Cairo Wednesday, Aug. 14, in violent clashes with protesters. When they spread to other towns, the interim presidency imposed a month-long state of emergency across the country and ordered the armed forces to help the Interior Ministry enforce security. A night curfew went into effect in Cairo and 10 provinces, enforced by the 2nd and 9th army divisions which rolled into the capital.

Early Wednesday, large security forces including Interior Ministry commandoes, carried out their anticipated raids to disperse the inmates of two camps who, for five weeks, refused to disperse until Mohamed Morsi was reinstated as president. Using tear gas, tanks and armored bulldozers, the officers quickly cleared the small camp at Giza, then battled most of the day to break up the larger, heavily fortified site in Nasser City, where tens of thousands of protesters, including many women and children, were encamped.
Western TV footage highlighted the violence and inflated reports of live gunfire, reporting that security forces had opened fire on unarmed protesters from machine guns and rooftop snipers. Those reports stoked Muslim Brotherhood claims of a massacre. Protest spokesmen cited figures which fluctuated between 500 and 2,200 dead and 7,000-10,000 injured. Later, the Brotherhood figure dropped to 300 dead and hundreds injured.

The Egyptian health ministry reported that 278 people had been killed, including 2 security officers, and up to a thousand injured in the day’s clashes across the country.

DEBKAfile reports that Egyptian security force used live fire in two instances: When protesters started shooting police officers with weapons they had hidden in the camps, and against hard-core groups who withstood riot control measures, including huge amounts of tear gas.

Egyptian authorities reported 25 people died in disturbances which spread out of Cairo to Menia, Asyut, Alexandria, Ban Suef and other places. Muslim Brotherhood rioters attacked government and police buildings and, in Alexandria, damaged the famous library. They also torched five Coptic churches.

Sources in Cairo expect the military units which entered Cairo Wednesday night to follow the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood with further measures. Two Brotherhood politicians were arrested in short order.

Shortly after the state of emergency was declared, the Egyptian high command appointed 19 generals as provisional governors, effectively placing 84 million Egyptians under military rule for the period of the emergency.
It is hard to estimate its duration after the month decreed elapses, because the violent struggle between the military under Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and the Muslim Brotherhood is not expected to die down any time soon.

Gen. El-Sisi is following a phased plan he prepared in advance for eradicating the Brotherhood as a political force in the land. It entails outlawing the movement and announcing a date for the election of a new president, for which he will stand and which the Brothers will be barred from contesting.

The Brotherhood too has a plan for resisting the military in escalating stages culminating in the downfall of Gen. El-Sisi. To achieve this, the movement has started going underground and operating a web of allied terrorist networks.

The Obama administration’s capacity to influence the coming course of events is limited. The Egyptian defense minister refuses to heed US demands to restore the country to democratically-elected civilian rule at this time – certain that it would only take the country back to Muslim Brotherhood rule.
He is not worried by White House rebukes or US and European threats to cut off economic and military aid to Egypt, because he has Saudi Arabia and the Emirates behind him. According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, they have pledged $40 million dollars to bolster the military in power and make sure that the Muslim Brotherhood is finally purged.

Wednesday night, the United States “strongly condemned” the violence in Egypt in a statement issued by the White House secretary from Martha’s Vineyard where President Barack Obama is on holiday. He accused “the new interim government of breaking its promise of a return to democratic civilian leadership and condemned the “return to a state-of-emergency law.”

All the same, said the White House spokesman, “talks are ongoing between Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry and their Egyptian counterparts.”

But beyond this, President Obama is evidently unwilling to go.

1. He is not about to directly challenge Gen. El-Sisi and the Egyptian army;
2. He will not pick a fight with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates as the military ruler’s backers;
3. He is not stepping in to save the Muslim Brotherhood from political extinction, although its loss would eliminate the key to the Middle East policy which he launched in 2009 and which presented the Brothers as a moderate movement and therefore America’s chosen senior ally in the Muslim world.

August 15, 2013 | 13 Comments »

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13 Comments / 13 Comments

  1. yamit82 Said:

    Right-wing MK sends bitter letter to ‘hypocritical’ Kerry over prisoner releases
    Ayelet Shaked accuses secretary of state of endangering Israeli lives, tells him to focus on Egypt and Syria ‘where people are being slaughtered’

    My friend – this is exactly the problem: she refuses to point the finger at Netanyahu. No one held a gun to his head and said he had to subvert justice! He is far worse than the “Judenrat” officials who were compelled to deliver up their fellow Jews to be killed under German orders. They had no choice – the Germans would have found someone willing to do it for them! What’s Netanyahu’s excuse? Shaked doesn’t address it! Its an evasion of responsibility! Israel is a country full of excuses these days accompanied by an unwillingness to hold high officials responsible for immoral/illegal/criminal orders carried out in their name or at their direction.

  4. EXPERT: ISRAEL ATTACK ON IRAN IMMINENT
    ‘There are about 1,100 hard targets that have to be taken out’
    http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/expert-israel-attack-on-iran-imminent/#6IHeSpZZvQEo2EHJ.99

    Evans said. “Netanyahu told me personally that there’s things he would not allow: territories, treaties, an army or airspace………
    “Israel’s going to do it. Israel will be the U.S. proxy. They’re going to have to do the attack. What Israel’s hoping for is the United States will give them backup for retaliatory targets. There are about 1,100 hard targets that have to be taken out,” said Evans, who believes the U.S. will provide that support. But he’s convinced the Israeli attack is only a matter of time. “Everything is on for the attack. It’s going to happen. Something very significant has to happen to stop it,” he said. “It’s definitely on the calendar.”

  6. yamit82 Said:

    Israeli-Egyptian relations after the June 30 revolution

    this article is especially interesting in that al arabiya is saudi owned and considered by some to be an instrument of saudi foreign policy.
    I note an aobsence of anti Israel rhetoric or even slant. Also, its apparent instructions to Israel are very specific and should be carefully read:

    Therefore, Israel will have to do the following, at least in the foreseeable future:
    – Keeping calm and waiting for a solution to the crisis.……..
    Not interfering in how events develop and resorting to indirect support for the relevant movements.
    – Committing to the peace treaty and pressuring Egypt to continue controlling the Gaza Strip, defending Sinai’s security.
    – Not rushing in concluding the Israeli-Turkish reconciliation, following tensions between the two countries and Turkey’s insistence that what happened in Egypt was a coup.

    The Turkish instruction illustrate the true feeling of the GCC towards Turkey as a meddler on their turf. they do not want Turkey in Gaza, object to Turkeys views on Sisi being a coup, and….
    Apparently Israel is following this “advice” or agenda.

  8. yamit82 Said:

    Signs of a Rebellion in Egypt’s Army?

    pretty weak response from such a powerful sector as MB. weren’t they caught recently fabricating a fake attack on their protest video? It appears that Sisi has made a move that he cannot go back on. In any case the prospect of more dead enemies is positive. What greater gift than to see all the enemies surrounding Israel in chaos. Furthermore, longer the better and fragmentation of the enemy states is even better.

  12. @ NormanF:

    And they’re not worried about foreign opinion in killing their enemies

    If only the same could be said of Israel.

    No one else takes orders from Obama except the Israelis. It is the only country that Obama has power over.

  13. The new Egyptian regime appears bent on eradicating the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Arab regimes are well-equipped to deal with internal opposition. That is why they seemingly remain in power forever.

    And they’re not worried about foreign opinion in killing their enemies to stay in power.