Egypt braces for rival protests
CAIRO (AFP) — Fears mounted of a bloody showdown between supporters and opponents of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi yesterday after one activist was killed in the latest violence to cloud the Arab world’s most populous democracy.
Islamist groups called on their supporters to camp out indefinitely in a Cairo square two days before a planned protest by the mainly secular opposition to demand Morsi’s resignation just a year after he took office.
The Islamists charge that their opponents are undermining Egypt’s fledgling democracy less than two and a half years after the popular uprising that overthrew veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak.
Their opponents say that the president has reneged on his promise to rule for all Egyptians and has failed to deliver on the uprising’s aspirations for freedom and social justice.
The overnight violence erupted in the eastern part of the Nile Delta, north of the capital, Morsi’s own home province.
Rival demonstrators clashed outside offices of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), on whose platform the president won election last year.
The FJP said on its website that one of its supporters was killed. Thirty people were also wounded, the health ministry said.