Former UN chief named Egypt’s prime minister

Scores dead and injured in street battles around country

LIBERAL opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei has been chosen as Egypt’s new prime minister, the Tamarod campaign behind the protests that toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi said yesterday, after talks with the country’s interim president.

A military source confirmed that the former UN nuclear watchdog chief was to be sworn in as premier later yesterday, three days after the army overthrew Morsi.

Meanwhile, Egypt counted its dead yesterday after Islamists enraged by the overthrow of Morsi took to the streets in an explosion of violence against what they denounced as a military coup.

At least 30 people died and more than 1 000 were wounded after Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood called for “Friday of Rejection” protests nationwide, and tried to march on the military compound where the ousted president is being held.

The most deadly clashes were in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, where 14 people died and 200 were wounded. In central Cairo, pro- and antiMorsi protesters fought pitched battles late into the night with stones, knives, petrol bombs and clubs, as armoured personnel carriers rumbled past.

Both pro- and anti-Morsi activists remained encamped in different squares in the capital.

The Health Ministry said 30 people were killed throughout Egypt on Friday and 1 138 injured, state media reported.

The military has given few details and no time frame for a new ballot — adding to political uncertainty at a time when many Egyptians fear that violence could polarise society even further.

Egypt’s first freely elected president was toppled after mass demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood rule, the latest twist in the tumultuous two years since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region in 2011.

A new Islamist group announced its formation in the lawless Sinai, adjoining Israel and the Gaza Strip, and called Morsi’s ousting a declaration of war on their faith. It threatened to impose Islamic law.

The group, calling itself Ansar al-Shariah in Egypt, said it would gather arms and start training its members, in a statement posted on an online forum

The Muslim Brotherhood has refused to join an inclusive transition plan

for militants in Sinai, recorded by Site Monitoring.

The events of the past week have aroused concern among Egypt’s allies in the West, including key donors in the US and the European Union, and in Israel, with which Egypt has had a US-backed peace treaty since 1979.

Egyptian newspapers quoted ElBaradei as saying he expected Gulf Arab monarchies that were hostile to the Brotherhood’s rule to pile in with financial support for the new authorities.

Morsi’s overthrow was greeted with wild scenes of protest by infuriated supporters, who fear a return to the suppression of Islamists they endured under military rule.

It has deepened Egypt’s crisis. The Brotherhood has spurned army invitations to join an inclusive transition plan culminating in fresh elections, saying it will not recognise the “usurper authorities”.

Early on Friday morning, three protesters were shot dead outside the Republican Guard barracks where the deposed Morsi was being held, security sources said.

The army denied responsibility for the shootings.

An army spokesman said troops did not open fire on the demonstrators and that soldiers used blank rounds and teargas to control the crowd. It was unclear whether other security forces were present.

Later, tens of thousands of cheering Islamists gathered near a mosque in a Cairo suburb, where they were addressed by Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, free to speak publicly despite reports on Thursday that he had been arrested.

Badie, like some other leaders, pledge that it was worth “our lives” to restore Morsi to the presidency.

The violence will ring alarm bells in the US. Washington has so far avoided referring to the army’s removal of Morsi as a “coup”, a word that, under US law, would require a halt to its annual $1.5-billion in aid.

But many Egyptians see the army as a guarantor of stability at a dangerous time for the world’s most populous Arab nation.

“Maybe they will need to issue a curfew. Maybe the trouble will last a few days,” said Cairo resident Said Asr, 41, sitting with friends outside a café. — SAPA-AFP and