Peace brought about by the elections was ultimately short-lived Clashes between Egyptian security forces and protesters against continued military rule have killed eight people and wounded another 299, the health ministry said on Saturday. "The toll from incidents on Friday outside the cabinet offices reached eight dead and 299 wounded," said Adel Adawi, an aide to the health minister quoted by state news agency MENA.
After violent clashes letup on Saturday at the site of Egypt's Occupy Cabinet protests against the military appointment of a prime minister, Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri himself held a press conference denying that the police or military used violence against the Occupy Cabinet demonstrators. Ganzouri said those triggering violence are driven by unknown people who “do not want good for this country.”
According to the prime minister, Cabinet violence started when a young man participating in the sit-in jumped inside the parliament headquarters to retrieve a football, which had accidentally fallen into the parliament courtyard. The young man was “unacceptably mistreated” admitted Ganzouri. However, he added that the youth’s reaction was not appropriate, as they started throwing stones instead of filing a complaint or demanding an investigation.
Ganzouri insisted that security forces did not leave the government building except very briefly as they were protecting the government headquarters under attack. He denied media reports that the military used live ammunition.
Ganzouri described the demonstrators in front of Cabinet as “not the revolution’s youth.”
He called on all political forces to urge the nation to reject what is happening saying “what is happening is not a revolution, but [rather] an assault on the revolution” further describing his government as “the revolution's salvation government.”
While Ganzouri spoke at the press conference, the military was attacking protesters in Tahrir Square to evacuate the area. Sit-in tents were burnt and media cameras confiscated.
Soldiers clashed with hundreds of rock-throwing protesters in central Cairo for a second consecutive day in a resurgence of turmoil just days after millions voted in parliamentary elections.
32 security forces personnel were also wounded, including an officer, as soldiers repeatedly attempted to break up a sit-in outside the Cabinet’s offices demanding an immediate transition to civilian rule, state television reported.
The clashes underlined simmering tensions between activists and security officers and threatened to ignite a new round of violence after two peaceful days of voting in balloting considered the freest and fairest in the country’s modern history.
Hundreds of protesters demanding an end to military rule and an immediate transfer of power to a civilian authority threw stones early Saturday at security forces who sealed off the streets around the country’s parliament building with barbed wire.
Soldiers on rooftops pelted the crowds below with stones, prompting many of the protesters to pick up helmets, satellite dishes or sheets of metal to try to protect themselves.
Clashes first began early Friday morning after soldiers stormed an antimilitary protest camp outside the Cabinet building near Tahrir Square, expelling demonstrators.
Violence was triggered after a protester said he had been arrested by soldiers and beaten up, infuriating his comrades who began throwing stones at the soldiers, witnesses said.
By early afternoon, troops were trying to disperse around 10,000 protesters with truncheons and what witnesses said appeared to be cattle prods that they used to give electric shocks to some of the demonstrators, according to Reuters.
"The people demand the execution of the field marshal," they chanted in reference to Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took over following Mubarak's ouster.
Pictures of military policemen grabbing a women by her hair, and another looming over a sobbing elderly lady with his truncheon quickly circulated on the social networking site Twitter, enraging activists.
The military police pulled back to a side street but the demonstrators were pelted with stones by men in plain clothes from another government building.
Troops fought daylong battles with protesters, showing the tensions seething in Egypt nine months after Hosni Mubarak’s fall, even in the midst of polls meant to herald a promised transfer to civilian rule.
Egypt’s Dar Al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its top officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, the state news agency MENA said.
Footage posted on Youtube showed the bloodied cleric lying prone on the street before protesters carried him away.
The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.
Friday clashes around the cabinet offices and parliament raged on after nightfall, with protesters throwing petrol bombs and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.
Ziad al-Elaimy, a leading figure in the liberal Egyptian Bloc who ran for parliament in Cairo, said he was beaten by security forces when he arrived to witness the scene.
When he protested, army officers told him: “To hell with you and your parliament,” according to Elaimy.
Some of the casualties had gunshot wounds, but the ruling military council, in a statement read on state television, denied that troops had used firearms and rejected accusations by pro-democracy activists that the army had ignited the unrest by trying to disperse a sit-in outside the cabinet office.
The council instead blamed the protesters for the violence, in a statement published by the official MENA news agency.
The council "affirms that the security personnel are exercising the utmost self restraint, and they did not assault protesters," the statement said.
"The ongoing clashes around the cabinet building and Qasr Al-Aini Street, on Friday, caused by some people and protesters who are throwing Molotov cocktails, stones and cartouche, which resulted in the demolition of one the People's Assembly walls in an attempt to break into, in addition to destroying some parts of the Shura Council and many people were injured,” the statement continued.
A new civilian advisory council set up to offer policy guidance to the generals said it would resign if its recommendations on how to solve the crisis were not heeded.
One of its members, presidential candidate Amr Moussa, told an Egyptian television channel that the body had suspended its meetings until the military council met its demands, including halting all violence against demonstrators.
Islamist and liberal politicians decried the army’s tactics.
“Even if the sit-in was not legal, should it be dispersed with such brutality and barbarity?” asked Mohamed ElBaradei, a presidential candidate and former UN nuclear watchdog head.
ElBaradei also criticised the advisory council, saying it was “just a front” for the SCAF.
The sit-in outside the cabinet office was a remnant of far bigger protests last month around Cairo’s Tahrir Square in which 42 people were killed shortly before voting began in Egypt’s first election since the army council took over from Mubarak in February.
The young activists who led the protests against Mubarak have not translated that success into results at the polls, where Islamist parties won a clear majority of seats in the first round of voting last month over the more liberal parties that emerged from the uprising. Results from this week’s second round are expected in the coming days, with the rest of the country set to vote next month.
“The council wants to spoil the elections. They don’t want a parliament that has popular legitimacy, unlike them, and would challenge their authority,” said Shadi Fawzy, a pro-democracy activist. “I don’t believe they will hand over power in June.”
Mustafa Ali, a protester who was wounded by pellet shot in clashes last month, on Saturday accused the military of instigating the violence to “find a justification to remain in power and divide up people into factions.”
A big turnout in the first round of the election, which began on November 28, had partly deflated street protests against army rule. But the unrest had already prompted the government to resign and the generals to pledge to step aside by July.
The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which has dominated the parliamentary election so far, condemned "the assault on protesters and the attempt to disperse them."
The Brotherhood also asked the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to launch an independent and transparent investigation into the clashes and also previous clashes between protesters and security forces. It demanded that the results of the investigation be announced within a short period of time, and that families of martyrs be compensated and that the government pay the medical fees of all those who were injured.
Tantawi, in a gesture apparently aimed at mollifying the protesters, ordered the treatment of all civilians wounded at military hospitals, which are usually better equipped than civilian counterparts, state television reported.
The demonstrators have been camped outside the cabinet offices since November 25, when they branched off from larger demonstrations in nearby Tahrir Square, the nerve centre of the 18 days of protests that led to the downfall of Mubarak.
They objected to the military's appointment of a new caretaker prime minister, calling on the generals to transfer power fully to a civilian government.
The military has said it will only step down once a president has been elected by the end of June following a protracted series of phased parliamentary polls.
The count was under way on Friday in the second stage of elections for the lower house of parliament. A third stage next month will be followed by a similar three-phase election to the upper house before the presidential vote.
As in the first phase last month, Islamist parties were leading the liberals, according to initial results, state media reported.
The Brotherhood had been widely forecast to triumph as the country's best organised political movement, well known after decades of charitable work and its endurance through repeated crackdowns by the Mubarak regime.
The good showing by the Salafists has been a surprise, raising fears of a more conservative and overtly religious legislature.
Overall counts for party list-based seats showed the Democratic Alliance list, led by the FJP taking the most votes, followed by the Egyptian Bloc, Nour Party, Revolution Continues Coalition (RCC) and Wasat Party lists.
In Ismailia Governorate, initial results also showed the FJP and Nour Party lists finding success.
In Monufiya Governorate, initial results in the second constituency showed the FJP list ahead, followed by the Nour and Wafd party lists.
In Aswan Governorate, the FJP was in the lead followed by the Nour, Egyptian Bloc and Wafd party lists.
On Sunday, a new cabinet is to hold its first full meeting since it was sworn in on December 7 and plans to weigh new austerity measures to address a wider-than-expected budget deficit.
But the latest violence may make it even harder for Ganzouri, who has made law and order a priority for his interim government, to gain credibility.