Supporters of deposed President Mohammed Mursi shout slogans as they gather outside the Egyptian embassy in Sana’a yesterday to show solidarity with his supporters in Egypt.
CAIRO: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton headed to Egypt yesterday, as the country’s political crisis deepened with a deadlock between the interim government and supporters of the ousted president.
Ashton’s visit, confirmed by Egypt’s vice presidency, comes a day after 72 people were killed at a protest in support of deposed Islamist leader Mohammed Mursi.
The bloodshed prompted defiance from Mursi’s supporters, who pledged to continue their protests calling for his reinstatement.
The presidency said it was “saddened” by the deaths, but that they came in a “context of terrorism”.
Sporadic violence continued throughout the country yesterday, with two killed in separate clashes, a security source said.
Ten gunmen were also killed during an operation by security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, the official Mena news agency said.
Egypt’s vice presidency said Ashton would meet with interim president Adly Mansour and vice president for international relations Mohamed ElBaradei.
Mena said she would also hold talks with members of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Tamarod group that organised the protests that preceded his ouster.
The visit comes amid polarisation in Egypt, with Mursi supporters accusing security forces of firing on unarmed civilians and the presidency denouncing “terrorism”.
“We are saddened by the spilling of blood on the 27th,” Mansour adviser Moustafa Hegazy told reporters.
But he dubbed the protest area where the deaths occurred a “terror originating spot” and said “we cannot decouple this from context of terrorism”.
The violence has deeply polarised Egypt, with its secular and liberal elite so far showing little sympathy for the Brotherhood or reservations about the return to power of a military which ruled for 60 years before the 2011 uprising.
However, in one of the first signs of doubt from within the interim cabinet installed after the military takeover, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Ziad Bahaa El Din said the government must not copy the “oppressive” policies of its foes.
“Our position must remain fixed on the need to provide legal guarantees not only for the members of the Brotherhood, but for every Egyptian citizen. Excessive force is not permitted,” El-Din wrote on Facebook.
And in another sign of unease, the Tamarud youth protest movement, which mobilised millions of people against Mursi and has fully backed the army, expressed alarm at an announcement by the interior minister that he was reviving the feared secret political police shut down after Mubarak was toppled.
Saturday’s killings took place the day after mass rallies called by military chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who said he wanted public backing for a crackdown on “terrorism”.
The Brotherhood saw the demonstrations as an attempt to justify an imminent onslaught against itself.
‘Devoted son’
In an apparent endorsement of the police, a smiling Sisi turned up at a graduation ceremony yesterday broadcast live on state television, receiving a standing ovation from the recruits, all decked out in starched white uniforms.
Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim hailed him as “Egypt’s devoted son”.
The military says it does not want to retain power and aims to hand over to full civilian rule with a “road map” to parliamentary elections in about six months.
But the very public role of Sisi as face of the new order has led to speculation that the next president could again be a military officer, like all of Egypt’s rulers between 1952 and Mursi’s election last year.
Yesterday morning army vehicles still surrounded entrances to the square in northeast Cairo where thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters have camped out for a month. Some people used pictures of the bearded Mursi to ward off the fierce sun.
“We are right, legitimacy is on our side and hopefully at the end God will lead us to triumph and we will not give up,” said Mostafa Ali, 29 from Nile delta town of Mansoura.
Authorities have said they want to clear the activists off the streets and local residents have complained about the camp.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Saturday’s killings suggested a “shocking willingness” by police and politicians to ratchet up violence against backers of Mursi. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said confrontation was “leading to disaster”.
“Egypt stands at a crossroads. The future of this great country that gave so much to civilization depends on how its citizens and authorities act over the following days and months,” she said in a statement.
The United States, which provides more than $1bn a year in military aid to Egypt, urged its Middle East ally to pull “back from the brink”, telling the security forces to respect the right to peaceful protest.
Egypt’s Salafi Nour party, the country’s second-biggest Islamist movement which has supported the army road map, said Saturday’s bloodshed showed a political solution was needed.
“The crisis will not be resolved with crowds and counter crowds and neither will it be solved through violence,” party chief Younes Makhyoun said.
Close to 300 people have died in violence since Sisi deposed Mursi. Besides the Cairo bloodshed, some of the worst violence has been in the lawless Sinai peninsula, which borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, where Islamist militants have targeted government forces on an almost daily basis.
The apparent revival of the political secret police is a move that could shake the enthusiasm of some secularists who have otherwise seen little to object to in a government campaign against their Brotherhood enemies.
Agencies
