Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Mursi during clashes with anti-riot police, at Nasr City district in Cairo, yesterday.
CAIRO: A young boy was killed yesterday as supporters and opponents of ousted president Mohamed Mursi fought in Suez city, and police fired tear gas elsewhere to quell disturbances, officials said.
The confrontations came as pro-Mursi groups called for a week of anti-military demonstrations under the slogan “Massacre of the Century.” That is a reference to the August 14 crackdown by security forces on Islamists in Cairo’s Rabaa Al Adawiya Square.
At least 600 people died in that operation and in clashes it sparked there and elsewhere in the country that day.
The boy, aged 10, was hit by a bullet in the head when pro-Mursi marchers clashed with opponents of the deposed Islamist leader after Friday prayers, security officials said. Disturbances were also reported in some districts of Cairo and a few other towns. Police fired teargas as pro- and anti-Morsi students pelted each other with rocks in the capital’s Al Azhar University, security officials.
On Thursday, Egypt’s interim rulers gave police the power to enter university campuses to quell protests without seeking prior permission from the prosecutor general or university authorities as previously required.
Yesterday, police also fired teargas to break up clashes in Rabaa Al Adawiya Square. Fighting also erupted in the city of Fayoum, south of Cairo, and was later broken up by police teargas.
Islamist supporters of Morsi have regularly staged demonstrations against the military-installed authorities since his ouster by the army on July 3.
Egypt’s interim authorities are engaged in a sweeping crackdown targeting Islamists, and more than 1,000 people have died in violence since then.
Islamists reject Kerry’s charge
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood yesterday dismissed comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry accusing them of stealing the revolution, saying Washington backed the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi.
Unrest has spiked in Egypt since the military overthrew Mursi in July following popular protests against his one-year rule and accusations that he concentrated too much power in the hands of the Brotherhood.
Kerry had defended the army’s action and Washington said Mursi had failed to live up to calls for an inclusive, transparent government based on democratic principles.
Mursi was Egypt’s first freely elected president taking over from the military junta which replaced veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak after he was ousted by massive protests in 2011. But on Wednesday Kerry delivered his harshest assessment to date of Mursi and his Islamist backers saying the revolt “got stolen by the one single-most organised entity in the state, which was the Brotherhood”.
The group’s secretary general Mahmoud Hussein hit back saying the Brotherhood won parliamentary and presidential elections after Mubarak’s ouster through “transparent” polls organised by the military which was ruling the country at the time and observed by former US president Jimmy Carter. Hussein charged that the US administration “backed and participated in the coup” that toppled Mursi. The United States “which promotes democracy and freedoms at home is the biggest supporter of dictatorship and repression”, Hussein said.
Since Mursi’s ouster, Egypt’s military-installed interim government has cracked down on the Brotherhood with hundreds behind bars and top leaders, including Mursi, put on trial on charges of inciting deadly violence.AFP
