Egypt’s military builds walls, then bombards streets with tear gas
Protesters scramble as tear gas bombards Mansour Street.
CAIRO: A tense calm was the mood much of Sunday afternoon, but as the sun set on Egypt’s capital, with it any pretense of peace. The police, having already erected massive walls on three separate streets where battles had taken place over the past four days, moved in with their armored vehicles and began pouring tear gas rounds onto protesters who had remained, determined to bring the military junta to its knees.
On Saturday evening, as sporadic clashes continued into the early morning on Sunday, the country’s Central Security Forces (CSF) put up three massive stone walls on the three main flashpoints of clashes, which ostensibly had ended the violence.
But as the sun set on Sunday, and as protesters remained on the streets, littered with the remnants of clashes; barbed wire and burned out storefronts highlighting the reality that had come to downtown Cairo once again, the police moved in, ending the tentative truce with swiftness and violence.
The APCs would move up, toward and into the crowds that remained, firing tear gas, not upwards as a dispersant, but shoulder level, in what activists said were attempts to injure or kill protesters.
“This is what they do. They are trying to kill us and make us leave, but it won’t happen. If I die, others will take my place,” said one protester, telling Bikyamasr.com that he was determined to remain in his position until he was not able to physically go on.
“I will take those canisters and throw them back until they make me leave. They will go,” he added, pointing at the APCs in the near distance. The protesters, he argued, understood that they could not leave until their demands were met.
In November, after 6 days of bloody clashes that left over 70 people dead, according to medical sources speaking to Bikyamasr.com at a Cairo morgue, walls were also erected and protests, on nearly the exact same street as presently, came to an end. Now, protesters are not backing down. They are not leaving.
But the sounds of sirens screaming in the neighboring streets from ambulances rushing to the frontlines in attempts to carry the injured to safety and medical attention are showing that as both protester and police refuse to give an inch, the tear gas and violence accompanies the night sounds in Egypt’s capital.
BM
Section: Egypt, Latest News
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