Egypt Clashes Enter 3rd Day as Death Toll Mounts
Police fired tear gas and birdshot at protesters on Saturday in the third day of deadly clashes in Cairo, as anger at the ruling military boiled over after 74 people died in football-related violence.
The police responded after dozens of protesters threw stones at officers guarding the interior ministry headquarters hundreds of meters (yards) from the Egyptian capital's iconic Tahrir Square.
In the canal city of Suez, two people died in clashes overnight from birdshot wounds, medics said. Hospital officials said nine people have been killed in Cairo and Suez since the start of the violence.
Five people were also wounded in overnight clashes outside police headquarters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, state media reported.
Marchers had taken to the streets on Friday across the country to demand that Egypt's ruling generals cede power immediately after a night of violence in several cities.
The health ministry said 2,532 people have been injured in the violence, in a statement published by the official MENA news agency on Saturday.
Protesters, many of them organized supporters of Cairo's main football clubs known as the Ultras, held up a huge banner to the police that read: "Those who didn't deserve to die have died at the hands of those who don't deserve to live."
Many of the dead in Wednesday's football riot in the northern city of Port Said were thought to have been al-Ahly supporters, set upon by partisans of the local al-Masry side after the Cairo side lost 3-1.
The Ultras played a prominent role among anti-regime elements in the uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak a year ago, and commentators and citizens have suggested pro-Mubarak forces were behind the massacre, or at least complicit.
In the ongoing aftermath, rocks and stones flew in all directions on Friday as police vans in Cairo repeatedly charged the demonstrators before retreating.
At one point, police clubbed protesters who were just meters away from the interior ministry.
Across the street, a building housing the Tax Authority burned, state television reported.
A soldier injured outside the interior ministry on Thursday died in hospital on Friday, MENA reported.
In a sign of increased insecurity, gunmen carrying automatic weapons stormed a police station in east Cairo, freeing detainees before setting fire to the building.
In the Dokki neighborhood, a group of men attacked a police station, taking weapons from the building.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) blamed the unrest on "foreign and domestic hands targeting the country."
In a statement on Facebook, it urged "all political and national forces of this great nation to take a national and historic role and intervene... to return stability."
Source: Agence France Presse
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