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Latest reports indicate two soldiers died and 42 civilians were killed (including children? at 03:30 in the morning) in the eruption of violence. It’s difficult to cut through the propaganda from both sides to understand what caused the outburst.
Update1:A reporter from Al Jazeera, the Qatar TV network, was denied entry at the Army press conference. The Muslim Brotherhood have made the choice for provocations and willingness to shed their own blood for martyrdom since President Morsi was brought down by massive protest and a military coup d’etat on July 3rd.
Egypt: Over a Dozen Dead in Brotherhood-Army Clash; Baha-al-Din proposed PM; Thousands support Gov’t
(Informed Comment) – Update1: The death toll in the deadly incident outside the Republican Guards barracks in Cairo has risen to over 50, with 300 wounded. Firm details of how the clash began are still not available. The pro-Brotherhood press, such as Aljazeera, is calling it a premeditated military massacre of peaceful praying civilians. The Egyptian military maintains that its troops were attacked by an armed commando squad seeking to free deposed President Muhammad Morsi from the barracks, and defended themselves.
There were two narratives about what happened. The army maintained that armed individuals tried to raid the military barracks, where they think deposed President Muhammad Morsi is being held. In this telling, there was an attempted violent jailbreak by Morsi’s militant followers, which the troops fought off, returning fire. The army said that an officer was killed and 40 military men were wounded in the “terrorist attack.”
The other narrative, from the Muslim Brotherhood side, is that the Brothers were peacefully praying near the barracks, when suddenly Egyptian military troops fell on them and massacred them. (Some Brotherhood sources were claiming 40 dead and dozens wounded early Monday morning).
Both narratives are problematic. The army’s description of a “terrorist attack” sounds propagandistic. The Brotherhood account doesn’t indicate a motive for the army abruptly to launch an attack on peaceful demonstrators.
The Muslim religious Right is charging the government with an unprovoked massacre. Even the liberal Muslim politician, Abdel Moneim Aboul Futouh, a former presidential candidate who broke with the Muslim Brotherhood years ago, called on interim president Adly Mansour to step down over the incident.
The Salafi Nour Party (hard line fundamentalists), who had earlier been willing to entertain the idea of cooperating with the transitional government in the wake of the military coup/ popular uprising against Morsi, withdrew from the dialogue.
Nour had already been unhappy by Mansour’s proposed appointments on Sunday, of Ziad Baha-al-Din, head of the Social Democratic Party, as prime minister, and Mohamed Elbaradei a interim vice president. Nour considers Elbaradei too “secular,” and doesn’t want Baha-al-Din because he is prominent in a political party; they had wanted a non-party technocrat.
Even hospital hallways are not spared violence
CAIRO (Gulf News) – Each family had come to comfort its loved ones, bloodied in street fighting the night before, but the emotional scars ripped open again on Saturday in the crowded white corridors of Kasr Al Aini Hospital.
“What you are doing is haram,” or forbidden by Islam, one man yelled at another whose bushy beard marked him as a supporter of Egypt’s deposed Islamist president, Mohammad Mursi.
What do you know about Islam, the bearded man scoffed at his accuser, a Mursi opponent. Instantly, hospital workers said, men in both families drew knives as their wounded relatives lay only a few feet away. The only ones injured, slightly, were security guards who rushed in to prevent a melee.
- UPDATE 4: 42 die in clashes between Egypt army and pro-Morsi protesters [UPDATE 6]
- The Salafi-Brotherhood Feud in Egypt