Four killed as football riot anger rocks Egypt

Police fired tear gas at rock-throwing protesters in Cairo last night as anger over Wednesday’s football riots spilled over into a second day of street violence

The protests have left at least four people dead and more than 1,500 injured nationwide, as the fall-out from the tragedy showed no signs of abating.

Demonstrators blame the police for failing to prevent a melee after a football match in the Mediterranean city of Port Said that killed 74 people.

The violence has fuelled frustration with the ruling generals who took power after the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak as president last February.

Yesterday, furious Egyptians took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and several Nile Delta cities. The biggest demonstrations were in the capital, where protesters wearing helmets and gas masks fought their way through streets thick with smoke from tear gas toward the interior ministry, a frequent target for demonstrations because it is responsible for the police. The demonstrators said they did not want to storm the ministry, but to hold a sit-in in front of it.

Many suggested the authorities had either instigated the Port Said violence or intentionally allowed it to happen to retaliate against the football fans, known as Ultras, who played a key role in clashes with security forces during the uprising that toppled Mr Mubarak.

“I came down because what happened in Port Said was a political plan from the military to say it’s either them or chaos,” Islam Muharram, 19, said.

The clashes in Cairo began late on Thursday and escalated overnight, with protesters pushing through barricades erected around the fortress-like ministry and bringing down a wall of concrete blocks erected outside the building two months ago, after similar violence left more than 40 protesters dead.

In Tahrir Square, thousands rallied to condemn the security forces and pointed to the Port Said incident to back their claims that the military has mismanaged Egypt’s transition to a democracy. They called for early presidential elections and for the army to speed up the transfer of power to a civilian administration.

Some 1,500 marched to the defence ministry, chanting “the people want to execute the marshal” – a reference to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling military council.

About 3,000 demonstrated in front of the Suez police headquarters, prompting officers to fire tear gas and live ammunition, witnesses said.

In Alexandria, thousands of people, some of them carrying photos of those killed in the football riot, protested in front of the city’s military headquarters, while in Port Said, hundreds of protesters rallied in the streets to condemn the attacks on the soccer fans. Some of the demonstrators held banners that read: “Port Said is innocent, this is a cheap conspiracy.”

The death toll from yesterday’s violence stood at four last night – three protesters and a security official. Another protester in Suez was in a critical condition with a wound to the neck.

The chief of security in Suez denied that the two deaths there had been from police gunfire.

The interior ministry urged the protesters “to listen to the sound of wisdom … at these critical moments” and prevent the spread of chaos.

Many members of the public and in the newly elected parliament, which held an emergency session on Thursday to discuss the violence, blamed the new leadership for letting the football riot happen – whether due to a lack of control by the security forces, or, as some allege, intentionally. It happened after home team Al-Masry scored a 3-1 upset win over Cairo’s Al-Ahly, Egypt’s most powerful club.