Cairo clashes: How chants turned to violence between pro and anti-Mubarak factions

‘Scores of people were getting hit’ says witness injured in Egyptian demonstration I was watching a pro-Mubarak demo half a mile from Tahrir Square: about 300 to 400 people, who grew to thousands as they made their way to the square. It was a mixed crowd, with women and children chanting peacefully in support of their president and many carrying photos of him. The problems started as this crowd got to the square and ran into the demonstrators calling for Mubarak to stand down. Both sides chanted at each other; one lot pro, the other anti. Suddenly the pro-Mubarak protesters charged. A few of them shouted “Forward! Forward!” then hundreds charged towards the demonstrators. And then some of them started picking up rocks to throw. It was a barrage, not just one or two. But for a good 10 minutes the anti-Mubarak crowd resisted responding. At one point mediators within the pro-Mubarak lot tried to make them calm down, shouting “Peaceful”. Unfortunately this didn’t last long. Before you knew it, the anti-Mubarak demonstrators were throwing rocks back. The distance apart was 20 metres, and it was a constant stream of rocks. Scores of people were getting hit. I saw a young child hit in one leg so she couldn’t walk; an older woman was hit in the head and bleeding profusely. I was hit during a charge by the pro-Mubarak lot, struck on my head by a rock which knocked me to the ground. I was bleeding heavily. People took me to a makeshift medical centre run by nurses who had obviously come straight from hospital to help, where they bandaged my head. They said I needed stitches, but there were so many other injured to look after.. There must have been more than 50 injuries, some of them horrific. I saw one guy whose left eye was bleeding, men with broken arms, broken teeth where they had just been hit in the face by rocks There were no police, no security forces. The army was there, but was not intervening. The two sets of protesters were left to fight it out. Injured pro-Mubarak supporters were being taken into the Square for treatment. Some of the demonstrators tried to attack them on the way in for treatment but others were shielding and protecting them and calling for unity, saying ‘These are our brothers’. People with more serious injuries were taken out towards ambulances and driven away. The demonstrators in Tahrir Square were far bigger in numbers than the pro-Mubarak lot but as the evening went on the pro-Mubarak forces started getting stronger. The main skirmish had been going on in the Square, but there were other struggles on the roads leading in. I had been trying to leave but I couldn’t get out. When I finally left, there were Mubarak supporters carrying metal gym weights, with Molotov cocktails being thrown and sporadic gunfire. That was about 5pm UK time. They now won’t let anyone into the Square. If people aren’t being kettled by the army it’s by the protesters themselves who are trying to control things. It’s still going on right now. Mustafa Khalili is a video producer at the Guardian Egypt Middle East Protest Hosni Mubarak Mustafa Khalili guardian.co.uk

Posted by on February 2, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry