Two Protestors Killed, Scores wounded in Egypt’s Confrontations
Cairo, (ST) _Two Egyptian protesters were killed and dozens were injured and cases of suffocation were reported due to escalated confrontations on Saturday afternoon at Qasr al-Nil Bridge near Tahrir Square in Cairo, and Egyptian security forces’ use of cartridges and tear gas against demonstrators.
Head of the Egyptian Authority for Relief Dr. Mohamed Sultan detailed that one protester died in Qasr Al-Aini hospital as a result of an acute respiratory problem and 9 others were wounded from dumping of tear gas heavily
News reports in Cairo quoted security sources that two people, a man in his 30s and a young boy, had died in Cairo from the effects of tear gas and rubber bullets. A total of 65 people were injured.
In Port Said, where the army took over security in the city centre from the police on Friday, about 2,000 residents who want the local fans spared execution blockaded ferries crossing the Suez Canal. Witnesses said youths also untied moored speedboats used to supply shipping on the waterway, hoping the boats would drift into the path of passing vessels.
Military police recovered five speedboats and brought them back to shore, but two were still drifting, one witness said.
Authorities controlling the Canal, an artery for global trade and major income source for the Egyptian government, said through traffic had not been affected. “The canal … is safe and open to all ships passing through it,” Suez Canal Authority spokesman Tarek Hassanein told the MENA news agency.
“In a separate security threat, the Egyptian Interior Ministry ordered police in the Sinai Peninsula to raise their state of alert after receiving intelligence that jihadists might attack them, MENA reported.
Officials have expressed growing worries about security in the desert region, which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts.
General unrest is rife as Egypt’s poor suffer badly from the economic crisis. Foreign currency reserves have slid to critically low levels and are now little more than a third of what they were in the last days of Mubarak.
The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent against the dollar since the 2011 incidents and the budget deficit is soaring to unmanageable levels due to the cost of fuel and food subsidies.
T. Fateh