CAIRO: Egypt’s interim rulers yesterday gave police the power to enter university campuses to quell protests without seeking prior permission, state media reported, after a student was killed in clashes.
The military-installed cabinet said police could now enter campuses in case of “threats and to confront protests that could harm students”, state news agency MENA quoted a cabinet statement as saying.
Police previously had to obtain permission from the prosecutor general or university authorities before entering campuses or dormitories to deal with demonstrators or clashes.
Yesterday’s move came after a student was killed in clashes at an Al Azhar University dorm in Cairo’s Nasr City district overnight, a security official and a medic said.
The student had been hit by birdshot in the chest and neck.
The clashes were between supporters and opponents of the military-installed authorities, security officials said, adding that groups of students also confronted each other at Cairo University on Thursday.
Meanwhile, a court in the capital sentenced 38 Al Azhar university students to 18 months in prison for “participating in violence” at the campus in October, MENA reported.
Students who support the new authorities and those who oppose it have clashed regularly in Cairo and other universities since the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Mursi on July 3.
The authorities are engaged in a crackdown on his Islamist supporters in which more than 1,000 people have been killed since the middle of August and thousands more have been arrested.
Among initiatives announced by the cabinet yesterday was boosting the powers of the police and military to help fight “terrorism”, MENA said.
Islamist militants have stepped up attacks in the restive Sinai since Mursi’s ouster and have also targeted security forces outside the peninsula.
On Wednesday, a car bombing in the Sinai killed 11 soldiers and wounded 34, and another blast in Cairo wounded four policemen.
The Sinai attack was the deadliest in the region bordering Gaza and Israel since an August 19 ambush on a security convoy killed 25 police in the north Sinai town of Rafah.
AFP
