AFP: Virginie Nguyen Hoang
By Charlie Miller
A march from Mohandessin to Ramses Square clashed with local residents and security forces on Friday. The march, which passed through Kit Kat Square, paused briefly in Sphinx Square, eyewitnesses reported.
The march crossed onto the 15th May Bridge into Zamalek, encountering little resistance, with eyewitnesses initially reporting local shop owners throwing bottles of water to the marchers as they passed over the island.
The march had all but passed over the island when heavy gunfire erupted close to Ramses Square and the Azbakeya Police Station, causing the demonstrators to retreat.
Automatic gunfire could be heard, with state television channel Nile TV broadcasting live images of a demonstrator wearing a green shirt firing an automatic AK-47 rifle into nearby buildings. There were also reports of youths atop buildings throwing rocks onto the marchers below.
Many of those injured closer to Ramses found themselves trapped by gunfire at both ends of the bridge, an eyewitness in the march said.
A 23 year-old Zamalek resident, who wished to remain anonymous, was returning from prayers at the Gezira club at around 1.30pm when a group of marchers opened fire in the direction of his group from atop the May Bridge.
“They were firing randomly,” he said, continuing: “I don’t think we were targeted specifically.” He added that the incoming rounds were either fired into the air or the ground around him.
His group took cover as local residents, three of whom he said were armed, began to fire into the air in order to threaten the crowd on the bridge. “We didn’t understand why we were being shot at,” he said, because “we were just walking home.”
“I felt more scared yesterday than I did on the 28th of January [2011], and that’s when things were really bad [in Zamalek],” he added, stating that on Friday “you had to take care of yourself.”
“On January 28th, you knew your enemy. They were thugs, and looked like thugs. Now, you don’t know who the enemy is, or what he looks like.”
28 January 2011 was one of the deadliest days of the 2011 Revolution, when clashes occurred across the city and a number of premises were looted. Armed bands of civilians roamed Cairo’s streets, including in Zamalek in an attempt to fend off would-be looters. These “popular committees”, he added, had been in force in Mohandessin recently, but had been told by the police to stand down.
He did not know of any casualties resulting from the exchange of fire in Zamalek, he said.
Several eyewitnesses saw injured marchers returning through the island from the front lines of the clashes close to Ramses Square.
At around 3pm on Friday, clashes erupted on the Nile Corniche, close to the Four Seasons Hotel, between protesters and security forces. A local resident told the Daily News Egypt that he heard “bursts of gunfire, which he assumed were AK-47,” alongside deeper sounds, which he said he thought were shotguns.
He said he did not see any demonstrators carrying weapons, but added that he was some distance away from the gunfire. An armoured police vehicle, flanked with armed police officers sped down the corniche in the direction of the demonstrators, he said, who scattered into Garden City.
In the Shubra neighbourhood, which is home to a large Coptic Christian community, clashes between local residents and supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Moris continued late into the evening, state-run Al-Ahram reported.
A number of demonstrators marched from Ramses to Shubra, the report claimed, where they were met with resistance from local residents. Clashes ensued, leaving a number of local residents injured.
“Popular committees” were formed to protect the streets of Shubra, the report continued, adding that the residents had attempted to force the intruders away from their neighbourhood via the Leymoun Bridge.
ONTV, a Cairo-based television channel, also showed footage of the clashes, in which tear gas was fired by security forces in an attempt to stop the violence.
The official death count as a result of Friday’s clashes stood at 173, with over 1,000 injured across the country, the cabinet spokesman Sherif Showqi announced on Saturday afternoon.
This figure is expected to rise as the severity of some injuries is discovered.
