Five die, 1,500 injured as police fire on protestors

Police in Cairo fired salvos of tear gas and birdshot at rock-throwing protesters as popular anger over a deadly football riot spilled over into a second day of street violence that left five people dead and more than 1,500 injured, doctors and health officials said.

In response to the crisis, the ruling military council issued a statement late last night, saying the country is passing through “the most dangerous and most important phase in Egypt’s history,” and calling on Egyptians to unite.

The protesters blame the police for failing to prevent the melee after a soccer match in the Mediterranean city of Port Said on Wednesday killed 74 people.

The violence — the soccer world’s worst in 15 years — has fuelled anger at Egypt’s ruling military generals and the police force.

Demonstrators in Cairo, the city of Suez and several Nile Delta cities turned their anger on the military, calling for it to surrender power because of what they say is the ruling generals’ mismanagement of Egypt’s transition to democracy.

In the capital, protesters in helmets and gas masks hurled stones at riot police firing tear gas outside the interior ministry, which controls the police.

The demonstrators say they do not want to storm the ministry, but to hold a sit-in in front of it to protest the stadium deaths.

“I came down because what happened in Port Said was a political plan from the military to say it’s either them or chaos,” said 19- year-old Islam Muharram.

Many protesters have suggested the authorities either instigated the Port Said violence or intentionally allowed it to happen to retaliate for the key role soccer fans known as Ultras had in clashes with security forces during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

The Cairo violence began late on Thursday and escalated overnight, with protesters pushing through the barricades erected around the fortress-like ministry building and bringing down a wall of concrete blocks erected outside the ministry two months ago.

Ambulances and volunteers on motorcycles ferried the injured, most of them suffering respiratory problems from the tear gas, to field hospitals set up nearby on Tahrir Square.

Yesterday, thousands rallied on the square, demanding early elections, and calling on the country’s military rulers to speed-up the transfer of power to civilian authorities.

Meanwhile, about 1,500 protesters marched to the defence ministry, chanting “the people want to execute the marshal,” referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, head of the military council ruling Egypt.

One man was killed in Cairo after being hit by birdshot at close range, a volunteer doctor said, adding that another four protesters had lost an eye from birdshot.