Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak battled in Cairo’s main square Wednesday, raining stones, bottles and firebombs on each other in scenes of uncontrolled violence as soldiers stood by without intervening. Government backers galloped in on horses and camels, only to be dragged to the ground and beaten bloody.
At the battle’s front line, next to the famed Egyptian Museum at the edge of Tahrir Square, pro-government rioters blanketing the rooftops of nearby buildings dumped bricks and firebombs onto the crowd below — in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds.
On the street, the two sides crouched behind abandoned trucks and pummelled each other with hurled chunks of concrete and bottles, and some among the more than 3,000 government supporters waved machetes. Bloodied anti-government protesters were taken to makeshift clinics in mosques and alleyways, and several hundred were reported injured.
Some wept and prayed in the square where around 10,000 protesters had massed Wednesday morning and where only a day before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of a quarter-million, the largest yet in more than a week of demonstrations demanding Mubarak leave power.
The clashes marked a dangerous new phase in Egypt’s nine-day-old upheaval: the first significant violence between supporters of the two camps. Clashes began, first in the port city of Alexandria, just hours after Mubarak — the country’s authoritarian ruler for nearly 30 years — went on national TV Tuesday night and rejected protesters’ demands he step down immediately. He defiantly insisted he would serve out the remaining seven months of his term. That speech marked an abrupt shift in the deteriorating crisis. A military spokesman appeared on state Wednesday and asked the protesters to disperse so life in Egypt could get back to normal. That was a major turn in the attitude of the Army, which for the past few days allowed protests to swell.
Some pleaded for protection from soldiers stationed at the square, who refused. Soldiers did nothing to stop the violence beyond firing an occasional shot in the air and no uniformed police were in sight. Many protesters accused the regime of paying its supporters to assault them — a tactic that security forces have used in the past — and the military of letting them do it. “After the revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it for us,” said Ahmed Abdullah, a lawyer in the square. “Why do they want us to be at each other’s throats, with the whole world watching us?” Another man shrieked through a loudspeaker, “Hosni has opened the door for these thugs to attack us.”
The regime for the first time Wednesday began to rally its supporters in significant numbers to demand an end to the unprecedented protest movement. Some 20,000 pro-government demonstrators held an angry but mostly peaceful rally across the Nile river from Tahrir, saying Mubarak’s concessions were enough and demanding protests end now that he has promised not to run for re-election in September, named a new government and appointed a vice-president for the first time. Their gathering was shot through with bitterness at the jeers hurled against the 82-year-old Mubarak over the past nine days. “I feel humiliated,” said Mohammed Hussein, a 31-year-old factory worker. “He is the symbol of our country. When he is insulted, I am insulted.”
Having the rival sides on the streets is particularly worrying because there do not appear to be anywhere near enough police or military to control resurgent violence. The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force him out by Friday, and the scenes of violence may have aimed to intimidate people from joining. International concern was also mounting. A day after President Barack Obama pressed Mubarak to loosen his grip on power immediately, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US “deplores and condemns the violence that is taking place in Egypt” and called for restraint.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Egyptian authorities must accelerate their political reforms and said that “if it turns out that the regime in any way has been sponsoring or tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable”. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meeting Mr Cameron in London, also condemned the violence as “unacceptable”.
German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said the assault on the protesters “raises the urgent question whether the political leaders of Egypt understand the need for rapid democratic reform”. The violence began after nearly 10,000 anti-government protesters massed again in Tahrir on Wednesday morning, rejecting Mubarak’s speech as too little too late and renewing their demands he leave immediately.
The rally was peaceful, but Mubarak supporters began to gather at the edges of the square, and protesters formed a human chain to keep them out. In the early afternoon, around 3,000 pro-government demonstrators broke through and surged among the protesters, according to an AP reporter at the scene. They tore down banners denouncing the President, fistfights broke out, and protesters grabbed Mubarak posters from the hands of the supporters and ripped them to pieces.
From there, it escalated into outright street battles as hundreds poured in to join each side. They tore up chunks of pavement and from grabbed ammunition from a nearby construction site, hurling stones, chunks of concrete and sticks at each, chasing each other.
At one point, a small contingent of pro-Mubarak forces on horseback and camels rushed into the anti-Mubarak crowds, trampling several and swinging whips and sticks. Protesters dragged some from their mounts, throwing them to the ground and beating their faces bloody.
The horses and camels appeared to be ones used by the many touts around Cairo who sell rides for tourists.
The main battle line next to the Egyptian Museum — the famed treasury of pharaonic antiquities and mummies — surged back and forth repeatedly for hours. Anti-Mubarak protesters held up sheets of corrugated metal ripped from the construction site as shields from the hail of stones. Some claimed that police IDs were found on several government supporters involved in the fighting. Some tried to charge into the buildings where government supporters on the roofs were pelting them with stones, but they were stopped by plainclothes security forces at the entrances.
Several firebombs from the roof landed in the museum grounds, setting a tree ablaze. Soldiers tried to put it out with a hose. Protesters were seen running with their shirts or faces bloodied. Men and women in the crowd were weeping. Scores of wounded were carried to a makeshift clinic at a mosque near the square and on other side streets. Doctors in white coats rushed about with bags of cotton, mercurochrome and bandages.
As night fell, some protesters went to get food, a sign they plan to dig in for a long siege.
The Army troops who have been guarding the square for days had been keeping the two sides apart earlier in the day, but when the clashes erupted they did not intervene. Most took shelter behind or inside the armoured vehicles and tanks stationed at the entrances to the square.
“Why don’t you protect us?” some shouted at soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told people to go home. “The Army is neglectful. They let them in,” said Emad Nafa, a 52-year-old among the protesters, who for days had showered the military with love for its neutral stance.
Gatherings of Mubarak supporters were more hostile to journalists and foreigners. Two AP and several other journalists were roughed up during various such gatherings. State TV reported Tuesday night that foreigners were caught distributing anti-Mubarak leaflets, apparently trying to depict the movement as foreign-fuelled.
The violence could represent a dangerous new chapter after a series of dramatic and unpredictable twists in Egypt’s upheaval. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by unrest in Tunisia took to the streets on January 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of demonstrations across this nation of 80 million. Initially, police cracked down hard with deadly assaults on the demonstrators. Then police withdrew completely from the streets for the day, opening a wave of looting, armed robberies and arson — largely separate from the protests themselves — that stunned Egyptians.
But since Sunday, the Army moved in to take control and the situation became more peaceful. The military announced it would not stop protests. As a result, the demonstrations swelled dramatically, protesters gained momentum and enthusiasm and many believed Mubarak’s immediate fall was at hand. The US put intense pressure on Mubarak to bring his rule to an end while ensuring a stable handover.
Wednesday’s events could mean the regime has had enough, and that it and the military aim to ensure the end of the unrest to let Mubarak shape the transition as he chooses over the next months. Mubarak has offered negotiations with protest leaders over democratic reforms.
As if to show the public the crisis was ending, the government began to reinstate Internet service after days of an unprecedented cutoff. State TV announced the easing of a night-time curfew.