75 followers of Egypt’s Morsi shot dead

CAIRO—Dozens of Mohammed Morsi’s supporters were shot dead in the Egyptian capital on Saturday as violence erupted following a night of massive rallies for and against the ousted Islamist president.

An AFP correspondent saw at least 37 bodies laid out at a makeshift mortuary in an Islamist-run field hospital in Cairo, with doctors saying all of them were killed by live rounds during the clashes.

Medics at the field hospital said a total of 75 people were killed, including bodies taken elsewhere. The health ministry said 20 people died.

The bloodshed came hours after the military-backed interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, warned a long-run- ning sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa alAdawiya mosque by Morsi loyalists would be ended “in the framework of the law.” The army ousted Morsi on July 3 after nationwide protests demanding his ouster.

Tens of thousands of supporters from his Muslim Brotherhood movement have since been camped outside the mosque in the Nasr City district of Cairo, in a defiant bid to get him reinstated.

Doctors at the field hospital said at least 1,000 were also wounded in clashes with police on the road to Cairo’s international airport on Saturday morning.

The health ministry said 177 people were wounded.

A Brotherhood leader, Murad Ali, told AFP that police had fired live rounds, but the official Mena news agency cited a security official it did not identify as denying the police used any live bullets.

Running battles broke out at dawn on the airport road, with police firing tear gas at stone- throwing protesters, Mena said. Buckshot was fired, but it was unclear from which side.

Thousands of supporters and opponents of the coup also took to the streets of Egypt’s second city Alexandria, sparking fierce clashes that killed seven people and wounded 194.

The bloodshed came as the interim interior minister said the military-backed government would move swiftly to break up the Islamist protest camp in Nasr City.

“There will be decisions from the prosecutor soon, and this situation will be ended,” Mohammed Ibrahim told satellite television channel Al-Hayat.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who orchestrated the coup, had called for a mass show of support on Friday for a crackdown on “terrorism.”

Hundreds of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters obliged and gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and around the Itihadiya presidential palace.