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| Khaled Abdullah/Reuters |
CAIRO — Egyptian security officials and members of the Muslim Brotherhood said that more than 40 supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi were killed as violence erupted outside a military officers’ club early Monday where the supporters had been holding a sit-in for days demanding his release from detention.
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood said the supporters were killed by soldiers and police officers during an “unprovoked” attack during dawn prayers using tear gas and live ammunition.
Security officials said the death toll stood at 43 civilians and one security officer. They added that more than 300 people had been wounded.
Al Jazeera broadcast footage of a field hospital run by Mr. Morsi’s supporters, showing what appeared to be several bodies lying on the ground and doctors treating bloodied patients. Army tanks blocked approaches to the officers’ club, as well as another square nearby where the field hospital was located.
Witnesses in the area where the shooting took place said they saw Mr. Morsi’s supporters performing the dawn prayers. Shortly afterward, the witnesses said, they heard the sound of heavy automatic weapons and pro-Morsi supporters were seen fleeing frantically, seeking to take cover behind debris on the streets and billboards.
It was the second explosion of deadly violence outside the Republican Guard officers’ club since the military intervened on Wednesday to depose Mr. Morsi, following mass protests against his rule. Mr. Morsi’s supporters believe the former president is being held inside the club, and have held rallies at its gates, demanding his release.
The killings came a day after the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies vowed to broaden their protests against the president’s ouster and American diplomats sought to persuade the Islamist group to accept his overthrow, its officials said. But the killings on Monday seemed certain to inject perilous new factors into the country’s fragile political calculus.
Continuing a push for accommodation that began before the removal of Mr. Morsi last week, the American diplomats contacted Brotherhood leaders to try to persuade them to re-enter the political process, an Islamist briefed on one of the conversations said on Sunday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
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| Mahmoud Khaled/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Even as both sides continued their street demonstrations on Sunday, Egypt’s new leaders continued their effort to form an interim government. Squabbles about a choice for prime minister spilled out into the open on Saturday, exposing splits among the country’s newly ascendant political forces.
State news media quoted a spokesman for Adli Mansour, the interim president, on Sunday as saying there was a “tendency” to name Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, as vice president, and a former chair of Egypt’s investment authority, Ziad Bahaa el-Din, as interim prime minister.
On Saturday, state news media said Mr. ElBaradei had been chosen as prime minister, but the presidency later backed away from the report after ultraconservatives known as Salafis, who fault Mr. ElBaradei for being too secular, apparently rejected the appointment. It was not clear on Sunday that the Salafi party, Al Nour, was any more inclined to accept Mr. ElBaradei as vice president.
Mr. Bahaa el-Din, a lawyer who served in the investment authority and on the board of the Central Bank under former President Hosni Mubarak, was abroad and was considering the request, according to a spokesman for his political party, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party.
The lack of agreement means that Egypt has been without a fully functioning government since Wednesday, when the defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, announced that Mr. Morsi had been deposed.
The power vacuum has left confusion about who is responsible for making decisions in the interim, and in particular for law enforcement. Over the past few days, the authorities have arrested Muslim Brotherhood officials and shut down television stations, including Islamist channels, though it is not clear on whose orders the security services were acting.
On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that prosecutors had interrogated its Cairo bureau chief, Abdel Fattah Fayed, for hours before releasing him on bail.
Al Jazeera’s Web site said Mr. Fayed, who had turned himself in, was charged with running an unlicensed satellite channel and “transmitting news that could compromise Egypt’s national security.” On Wednesday, as part of what appeared to be a coordinated sweep against news media outlets seen as sympathetic to Mr. Morsi, security officials raided the offices of Al Jazeera’s local Cairo station and several other channels.
Since then, thousands of Islamists have held a vigil for Mr. Morsi at their new base in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, and in recent days outside the officers’ club of the Republican Guard, where some believed Mr. Morsi was being held.
Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that nominated Mr. Morsi for president, have sought to convince the world that his removal was both illegal and untenable. They now say they intend to escalate their demonstrations across Egypt.
In the square, Brotherhood officials pledged that their growing protests would force the military to release Mr. Morsi, insisting that no one else would negotiate on their behalf. “I think the military has to yield; they won’t have any choice,” said Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman.
“We are stepping it up every few days, with protests around the country,” Mr. Haddad said. “We are logistically capable of carrying this on for months.”
He said the protests themselves would turn into gathering places for the observation of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when it begins this week.
To bolster its claims to legitimacy, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, sent out an e-mail to reporters with mathematical calculations that it said indicated about five million supporters had gathered in the area.
At the same time, supporters of the military takeover redoubled their efforts to gain international support for Mr. Morsi’s ouster. Several current and former Egyptian officials appeared on American talk shows on Sunday to argue that the military seizure of power did not constitute a military coup d'état, which under United States law would require an automatic cutoff of $1.5 billion in annual aid.
“The military had the choice between intervention and chaos, and they had to respond to that,” Nabil Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”
In Cairo, hundreds of thousands of Mr. Morsi’s opponents gathered in Tahrir Square and outside the presidential palace, in what protesters said was an effort to counter claims to legitimacy made by the deposed president’s supporters.
In a mirror image of the pro-Morsi protests, many at the gathering seemed far less interested in swaying the Islamists than proving, to both Egyptians and the world, that their numbers were greater.
And several protesters said they were there to thank the army for its role in removing Mr. Morsi. Many in the crowd held portraits of General Sisi or banners praising the military. Jets and helicopters that flew overhead gave the demonstration the feel of a ticker-tape, postwar rally.
But in an alley near the square, a group of young protesters talked about the toll of Egypt’s conflict, still far from over. They were longtime activists, and all had friends who had died in protests during Egypt’s transition. Now, their conversations with friends in the Muslim Brotherhood had become arguments.
Mai Mandour, a 23-year-old law student, said her brother had told her that Islamist neighbors had started shaving their beards. “Everyone’s worried about a civil war,” she said.
Mayy El Sheikh and Asmaa Al Zohairy contributed reporting.
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