CAIRO: Protesters filled the streets and clashed for a second day Friday with police who fired tear gas and birdshot in Cairo, as a deadly soccer riot focused rising public anger over lawlessness and collapsing security a year after Egypt’s uprising.
Six people have been killed and more than 1,500 injured in the latest bloodshed that followed a violent melee and stampede after a soccer game Wednesday in the Mediterranean city of Port Said in which 74 people died.
Egyptians streamed out of Friday prayers in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and several Nile Delta cities, criticizing police and calling on the military rulers led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to step down.
On Cairo’s Tahrir Square — the heart of the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak a year ago — protesters raised banners and pictures of those killed in Port Said and chanted, “The people want to execute the marshal.”
The police force, which for decades was associated with torture and corruption in the Mubarak regime, is now being criticized in the soccer stadium deaths — whether from a lack of control or, as some alleged, on purpose.
For many Egyptians, the security vacuum is not just a sign of incompetence but part of the larger overall failure by the military council to steer the country through its turbulent transitional period. They also see selectivity in policing the streets.
Leading democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei said delays in reforming the security apparatus is itself “a crime against the nation,” adding that the current violence is the “price we pay for stumbling in the transitional period.”
The clashes in Cairo began Thursday as the bodies of the dead soccer fans were returned to the capital for burial, and the violence escalated. Protesters converged on the headquarters of the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, throwing stones.
Police responded with tear gas and birdshot, and protesters donned helmets and gas masks to battle their way through streets thick with smoke from tear gas and burning tires.
“I came because I’m trying to do anything to feel that I took part in getting people’s rights and voicing all that’s inside me,” said Ahmed Emad, 20, whose two friends were killed in Port Said. “If I sit at home, I will explode after all I’ve seen.”
The death toll from Friday’s violence rose to six. That figure included a security officer in Cairo, according to the official MENA news agency. One protester in Cairo was killed after being hit by birdshot at close range, a volunteer doctor said on condition of anonymity.
