Mayhem in Cairo as Morsi Backers Fight for Return

Khalil Hamra/Associated Press

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian president, carried a man shot on Friday in Cairo after troops opened fire. More Photos »

By BEN HUBBARD

Published: July 5, 2013 231 Comments

CAIRO — Egypt’s bitter split over who should be ruling the country exploded into violent clashes in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere on Friday as masses of demonstrators celebrating the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi battled crowds of Islamists who wanted him reinstated.

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Mohammed Badie, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. More Photos »

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Combatants used rocks, sticks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails in a battle lasting hours that raged near Tahrir Square and across a bridge spanning the Nile, part of the most widespread street violence in Egypt since the early days of the 2011 revolution.

The mayhem capped a day full of massive and defiant protests by Islamists demanding that Mr. Morsi be returned to power. At least four people were killed and many were wounded when security forces fired into a protest near the officers’ club of the powerful Republican Guard, where many believed Mr. Morsi was detained.

With clashes breaking out late into the night, it was impossible to estimate the full extent of casualties and damage. But early Saturday, security officials said at least 30 people had been killed nationwide and hundreds wounded, many of them in Cairo.

Islamists in other cities across the country also demanded Mr. Morsi’s reinstatement, breaking into government offices in several provinces and temporarily evicting military officials. Fifteen people died in Alexandria, and a curfew was declared in the Sinai Peninsula, where six soldiers and police officers were killed in at least four attacks on security posts.

The new violence suggested that the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president, after protests by millions of Egyptians angry with his rule, had worsened the deep polarization between Islamists who call his ouster a military coup and their opponents who say his removal was the result of an urgent need to fix Egypt’s myriad problems.

By turning out in the tens of thousands, the pro-Morsi crowds underlined the organizational might of the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged as the major political force and dominated rounds of elections after the country’s revolution two years ago. At that time, it gained power that many in the group had dreamed of for decades. The military’s intervention in politics this week entirely removed it from the government.

The group called the protests the “Friday of Rejection” and chanted for Mr. Morsi’s return.

“We will bring him back bearing him on our necks, sacrifice our souls for him,” Mohamed Badie, the group’s spiritual leader, told an enraged crowd at a large demonstration in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City. “We will bring back the rights of the Egyptian people who were wronged by this disgraceful conspiracy.”

Mr. Badie said the reports that he had been among the Islamist leaders arrested in a post-Morsi crackdown by security forces were false. Hundreds of Islamists were detained within a day after Mr. Morsi’s ouster. Some were released on Friday.

An interim president installed by the military, Adli Mansour, a former chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, took a further step on Friday to erase the vestiges of Mr. Morsi’s government by formally dissolving the Shura Council, the country’s only operating house of Parliament, which the Islamists had dominated. The constitutional court had disbanded the lower house last year, one of many challenges Mr. Morsi had faced in his troubled tenure.

In a further affront to the Islamists, the Egyptian news media have marginalized their message in the two days since Mr. Morsi was deposed. Despite the interim government’s pledge of inclusiveness, Islamist television broadcasters were shuttered, and the state television barely covered the breadth of the pro-Morsi demonstrations on Friday.

Underpinning the Islamists’ fears of the emerging political order was a keen awareness of the long history of enmity with the security services. While some Islamists did use violence against the state, Egypt’s previous rulers kept even nonviolent Islamists in check by banning their organizations and subjecting them to arbitrary arrests and torture.

For some, those memories have come flooding back.