I can’t claim to have been especially prescient when I posted last month on the brink of the Egyptian military’s ousting of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi as president: “This is unlikely to end well.”
The military regime seems to have concluded that clearing protest encampments in Cairo of MB supporters required the bloodiest tactics imaginable. Or perhaps it is incapable of any other methods.
MB supporters are responding in brutal ways.
Protestors have stormed a police station in Giza (Karadaseh) killing all inside including 2 police officers & 2 conscripts #egypt @nbcnews
— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) August 14, 2013
Nuns of st. George church are hiding on rooftop after the church was burnt by MB militias in #Assiut upper #Egypt pic.twitter.com/iinZ9vlcIB
— Marianne Magdy (@MarianneMagd) August 14, 2013
Al Jazeera, the BBC, and The Washington Post are live-blogging.
The Washington Post reports:
Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was appointed vice president in the interim government last month, resigned to protest the violent crackdown.
The United States strongly condemned the violence and expressed opposition to the state of emergency. It said it would hold the interim government accountable for keeping its promises of a speedy transition to a democratically elected civilian administration.
Egypt’s Health Ministry said 149 people died in Cairo and in the ensuing violence nationwide, state news media reported. The ministry earlier reported that more than 870 people were wounded.
The MB has put the number of dead at over 2,000. Whatever the real number, it’s horrific enough.
