Twenty-three people have died in violent clashes between Coptic Christians and security forces in Egypt
AFP
10/10/2011
AT least twenty-three people have died in clashes between Coptic Christians and Egyptian security forces, in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February.
The health health ministry said a total of 174 people were injured in violence during a Coptic Christian protest in central Cairo on Sunday, which saw a curfew imposed on the centre of the capital, said official statements broadcast on public television.
The massive clashes drew Christians angry over a recent church attack, hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces.
A curfew was imposed from 2am to 7am local time in the area from Maspero to Abbassiya square in central Cairo, said a banner broadcast on television last night.
The violence lasted late into the night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1000 security forces and armoured vehicles to defend the state television building along the Nile, where the trouble began.
The clashes spread to nearby Tahrir Square, drawing thousands of people to the vast plaza that served as the epicentre of the protests that ousted Mubarak.
They battled each other with rocks and firebombs, some tearing up pavement for ammunition and others collecting stones in boxes.
At one point, an armoured security van sped into the crowd, striking a half-dozen protesters and throwing some into the air.
The killings prompted an urgent appeal from Prime Minister Essam Sharaf for Egypt’s Muslims and minority Christians “not to give in to sedition because it is a fire which burns up everybody”.
The protest began in the Shubra district of northern Cairo, then headed to the state television building along the Nile where men in plainclothes attacked about a thousand Christian protesters as they chanted denunciations of the military rulers.
Later in the evening, a crowd of ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis turned up to challenge the Christian crowds, shouting, “Speak up! An Islamic state until death!”
Armed with sticks, the Muslim assailants chased the Christian protesters from the TV building, banging metal street signs to scare them off. It was not immediately clear who the attackers were.
Gunshots rang out at the scene, where lines of riot police with shields tried to hold back hundreds of Christian protesters chanting, “This is our country!”
Security forces eventually fired tear gas to disperse the protesters. The clashes then moved to nearby Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising against Mubarak.
The clashes left streets littered with shattered glass, stones, ash and soot from burned vehicles.
Later Sunday night, hundreds of Muslims and Coptic Christians exchanged blows and threw stones at the hospital treating the wounded from the earlier clashes.
Some 200 to 300 protesters marched on the hospital to meet up with several hundred Christians already gathered there, including family members of the dead and wounded.
Several cars were set on fire in a wide street next to the hospital, and Coptic protesters were tapping the cars to make petrol bombs.
In the past weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angry over church construction.
“What is taking place are not clashes between Muslims and Christians but attempts to provoke chaos and dissent,” the prime minister said on his Facebook page.
“This is not befitting the children of the homeland who remain and will remain a single hand against the forces of vandalism… and extremism,” Mr Sharaf said.
