‘If I see you again, I’ll shoot you’

ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER CAIRO— The warnings had been coming for weeks. But Wednesday’s violent attack by soldiers and police upon opposition protesters’ main camp was stunning in its ferocity, an assault that transformed nearby streets into a war zone.

Gunfire crackled as police in flak vests, armed with assault rifles, ran in and out of the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp. Plumes of black smoke and white smoke rose from the fires and tear-gas canisters. Bulldozers plowed into tents and tore through the protesters’ walls of sandbags.

Two colleagues and I reached the site just before 8 a.m., about an hour after security forces launched a raid on the camp where men, women and children have been rallying in support of ousted president Mohammed Morsi for the past six weeks.

By then, violence was spilling over into side streets. Police carried a wounded colleague past us. An officer beat a teen over the head with a handgun before hauling him away. A woman implored a police officer not to kill protesters as they shoved back a man who, through tears, said he was trying to get to his little sister, trapped in Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.

It wasn’t long before the police opened fire with tear gas and then live ammunition, on spectators too. Women and men ran down the block, screaming for cover.

“If I see you again, I’ll shoot you in the leg,” a police officer told me and my colleagues, Sharaf al-Hourani and Mansour Mohamed. Security forces on a nearby roof watched us through binoculars. Two helicopters circled overhead.

We found ourselves trapped between police cordons as pro-Morsi protesters marched chanting, “With life, with blood, we sacrifice for Islam” — until police opened fire with bullets and tear gas.

By11a.m., a bullet whistled too close over our heads. I have no idea where it came from. At times, it sounded like gunfire was coming from all directions.

Egypt’s military-backed interim government had vowed for weeks to break up the sit-ins. But now government forces were unleashing sniper fire that seemed indiscriminate.

Along with scores of Morsi supporters, those killed included two journalists. Snipers also shot at people who tried to approach or leave a makeshift hospital inside the camp, where dozens of dead lined the floor.

By noon, the clashes that were pinning us down begun to abate as police pushed protesters back from their cordon.

We edged our way out, past rows of police and a vehicle, to where bloodied men detained by government forces sat on benches, clutching their heads and awaiting their fates.