Egypt chaos: Troops clear mosque as Brotherhood ban looms

Son of Brotherhood leader among dead, more protests promised.

CAIRO:

Security forces cleared a Cairo mosque after a gun battle with followers of the Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday, while Egypt’s army-backed government, facing deepening chaos, considered banning the group.

Three Reuters witnesses saw gunmen shoot from a window of the al-Fath Mosque, where supporters of deposed president Mohamed Mursi had taken shelter during ferocious confrontations in the heart of the Egyptian capital on Friday.

Another gunman was shown on television shooting from the mosque’s minaret and soldiers outside returning fire. Hours later, police moved in and secured the building, making scores of arrests as crowds on the streets cheered them on.

It was not clear if anyone died in the clashes - the fourth day of violence in Egypt, which has killed almost 800 people.

Troubles were also reported in the second city Alexandria, where an office run by the Muslim Brotherhood was set ablaze.



With anger rising on all sides, Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi proposed disbanding the Brotherhood, raising the stakes in the bloody struggle. “We are not facing political divisions, we are facing a war being waged by extremists developing daily into terrorism,” presidential political adviser Mostafa Hegazy told reporters.

If Beblawi’s proposal to disband the Brotherhood is acted on, it would force the group underground and could herald large-scale arrests against its members placed outside the law.

Many Western allies have denounced the recent wave of killings, including the United States, alarmed by the mayhem in a country which has a strategic peace treaty with Israel and operates the Suez Canal, a major artery of global trade.

The health ministry said 173 people died in clashes across Egypt on Friday, including 95 in central Cairo, after the Brotherhood called a “Day of Rage” to denounce a crackdown on its followers on Wednesday that killed at least 578 people. Fifty-seven policemen died over the past three days, the interior ministry said.

Among those killed on Friday was a son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, shot dead close to al-Fath mosque, which was rapidly transformed into a makeshift morgue and a refuge for hundreds of Mursi’s supporters, looking to escape the bloodshed.

The building was surrounded overnight and police fired volleys of tear gas into the carpeted prayer hall in the early afternoon, filling the hall with billowing white smoke and leaving those inside gasping for breath. Soon afterwards gunshots rang out from both sides.

Egyptian authorities said they rounded up more than 1,000 Brotherhood supporters after Friday’s protests, showing one handcuffed man on television with an automatic gun on his lap. Security sources said Mohamed al Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, had also been detained.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2013.