Rivals get marching orders
Egypt military urges protesters to leave presidential precinct
EGYPT’S Republican Guard ordered rival demonstrators to leave the area around the presidential palace in Cairo yesterday, after fierce overnight clashes that killed seven people. Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi withdrew, but the opposition promised more protests.
The presidency announced that the Republican Guard, whose duties include protecting the palace, had set a 3pm deadline for supporters and opponents of Morsi to quit an area they had turned into a battleground.
The military played a big role in removing President Hosni Mubarak during last year’s popular revolt, taking over to manage a transitional period, but had stayed out of the latest crisis.
Morsi’s Islamist partisans had fought opposition protesters well into the early hours during duelling demonstrations over the president’s decision last month to expand his powers to help him push through a mostly Islamist-drafted constitution.
A witness said the hundreds of Morsi supporters who had camped overnight near the palace perimeter left before the military deadline passed. Dozens of Morsi’s foes remained, but were kept away by a barbed wire barricade guarded by tanks.
An official of the opposition National Salvation Front, who asked not to be named, said more protests would take place.
“We are planning marches later today, most probably taking off from Tahrir Square, disregarding the Republican Guard’s decision. We had
‘ We are planning marches . . . disregarding the Guard’s decision
many injuries last night, and we are not going to have their blood wasted,” the official said.
The commander of the Guard, which has deployed tanks and armoured troop carriers to help police pacify the area, said the intention was to separate the adversaries, not to repress them. “The armed forces, and at the forefront of them the Republican Guard, will not be used as a tool to oppress the demonstrators,” General Mohamed Zaki said.
After the sustained clashes of Wednesday night, the streets around the palace were much calmer yesterday morning, apart from a brief bout of rock-throwing between the hundreds of Islamists and dozens of opposition partisans still at the scene.
Army officers on the spot urged the combatants to back off and stop bloodshed that is further dividing Egypt and imperilling its quest for political stability and economic recovery nearly two years after mass protests overthrew Mubarak. Officials said 350 people had been wounded, in addition to the seven killed. Six of the dead were Morsi supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood said. Each side blamed the other for the violence.
Egypt plunged into renewed turmoil after Morsi assumed wide powers on November 22 to press ahead with a mostly Islamist-drafted constitution and forestall any court challenges to it.
The Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, to which Morsi belonged before he was narrowly elected president in June, appealed for unity. Divisions among Egyptians “only serve the nation’s enemies”, Mohamed Badie said.