UN discusses Egyptian crisis as death toll rises

The UN Security Council was meeting last night to discuss the situation in Egypt after hundreds of people were killed and thousands wounded when troops and police crushed protests seeking the return of deposed President Mohamed Morsi.

The Security Council was briefed behind closed doors by UN deputy secretary general Jan Eliasson at 9.30pm. The meeting was jointly requested by council members France, Britain and Australia

The move came as the Egyptian Health Ministry raised the death toll from the day’s violence that followed a crackdown on two camps housing supporters of the ousted president to 638.

Ministry spokesman Mohammed Fathallah told The Associated Press yesterday the number of injured in the previous day’s violence also has risen to 3,994.

Yesterday’s violence began when police moved to clear two protest camps housing mainly Islamist protesters calling for Mohammed Morsi’s reinstatement. The crackdown prompted clashes elsewhere in Cairo and other cities.

Fathallah said 288 of the dead were killed in the larger of the two camps, in Cairo’s eastern Nasr City district.

As the death toll soared, weeping relatives in search of loved ones uncovered the faces of the bloodied dead in a Cairo mosque near the flattened epicentre of Islamist support for Morsi.

Violence also spread, with government buildings set afire near the Pyramids, policemen gunned down and scores of Christian churches attacked.

As turmoil engulfed the country, the Interior Ministry authorised the use of deadly force against protesters targeting police and state institutions after Islamists torched government buildings, churches, police stations and cut main roads in retaliation for the crackdown on their encampments.

The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, tried to regroup after the encampments were razed and many leaders arrested, calling for a mass rally today in a challenge to the government’s declaration of a month-long nationwide state of emergency and a dawn-to-dusk curfew.

Inside the El Imam mosque, the names of the dead were scribbled on the white sheets covering the bodies, some of which were charred, and a list with 265 names was plastered on the wall. Heat made the stench from the corpses almost unbearable inside the mosque, where posters of Morsi were piled up in a corner.

Many people complained that authorities were preventing them from obtaining permits to bury their dead, although the Muslim Brotherhood announced that several funerals had been held for identified victims yesterday. Fathallah denied that permits were being withheld.

Omar Houzien, a volunteer helping families search for their loved ones, said the bodies were carried to the mosque from a medical centre at the protest camp in the final hours of Wednesday’s police sweep because of fears they would be burned.

Elsewhere, a mass funeral was held in Cairo for some of the 43 security troops who authorities said were killed in Wednesday’s clashes. Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, led the mourners.

A police band played solemn music as red fire engines bore the coffins draped in white, red and black Egyptian flags in a funeral procession.

The deadly crackdown drew widespread condemnation from the Muslim world and from Western leaders, with and led to the Security Council meeting.