One dead, hundreds hurt in Egypt clashes

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak battled in Cairo’s main square today, raining stones, bottles and firebombs on each other in scenes of uncontrolled violence as soldiers stood by without intervening.

One person was killed when he fell off a bridge and nearly 600 people were injured, Egypt’s health ministry said.

State TV broadcast an order for all protesters to leave Tahrir Square because of “provocative elements throwing firebombs”. It did not clarify the source of the order.

Government backers galloped in on horses and camels, only to be dragged to the ground and beaten.

At the one of the fighting’s front lines, next to the famed Egyptian Museum at the edge of Tahrir Square, pro-government rioters blanketed the rooftops of nearby buildings and dumped bricks and firebombs onto the crowd below – in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds.

On the street, the two sides crouched behind abandoned trucks and pummelled each other with hurled chunks of concrete and bottles.

Some of the 3,000 government supporters waved machetes as their anti-Mubarak rivals banged metal fences with sticks.

Bloodied young men staggered or were carried into makeshift clinics set up in mosques and alleyways by the anti-government side.

Protesters pleaded for protection from soldiers stationed at the square, who refused. Soldiers did nothing to stop the violence beyond firing an occasional shot in the air and no uniformed police were in sight.

Some protesters wept and prayed in the square, where around 10,000 had gathered this morning and where only a day before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of 250,000 people, the largest yet in more than a week of demonstrations demanding Mr Mubarak leave power.

Protesters claimed there were plain-clothed police among their attackers, showing police ID badges they said were wrested off them. Others, they claimed, were paid by the regime to assault them – a tactic that security forces have used in the past.

“After our revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it for us,” said Ahmed Abdullah, a 47-year-old lawyer in the square. “Why do they want us to be at each other’s throats, with the whole world watching us?”

Another man shrieked through a loudspeaker: “Hosni has opened the door for these thugs to attack us.”

The clashes marked a dangerous new phase in Egypt’s nine-day-old upheaval: the first significant violence between supporters of the two camps.

Clashes began first in the port city of Alexandria just hours after Mr Mubarak - the country’s authoritarian ruler for nearly 30 years – went on national television last night and rejected protesters’ demands he step down immediately. He defiantly insisted he would serve out the remaining seven months of his term.

That speech marked an abrupt shift in the deteriorating crisis. A military spokesman appeared on state TV today and asked the protesters to disperse so life in Egypt could get back to normal. That was a major turn in the attitude of the army, which for the past few days had allowed protests to swell.

Also, the regime for the first time began to rally its supporters in significant numbers to demand an end to the unprecedented protest movement.

Some 20,000 pro-government demonstrators held an angry but mostly peaceful rally across the Nile River from Tahrir, saying Mr Mubarak’s concessions were enough and demanding protests end now that he has promised not to run for re-election in September, named a new government and appointed a vice president for the first time.

The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force him out by Friday, and the scenes of violence may have aimed to intimidate people from joining.

International concern was also mounting. A day after US president Barack Obama pressed Mr Mubarak to loosen his grip on power immediately, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US “deplores and condemns the violence that is taking place in Egypt” and called for restraint.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Egyptian authorities must accelerate their political reforms and said that “if it turns out that the regime in any way has been sponsoring or tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable”. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, meeting Mr Cameron in London, also condemned the violence as “unacceptable”.

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle said the assault on the protesters “raises the urgent question whether the political leaders of Egypt understand the need for rapid democratic reform”.