Gunfire targets Egypt protestors

Automatic weapons fire pounded the anti-government protest camp in the Egyptian capital before dawn today in a dramatic escalation of what appeared to be a well-orchestrated series of assaults on the demonstrators.

At least three protesters were killed by gunfire in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, according to the activists.

The Egyptian military have started taking up positions between anti-government demonstrators and supporters of President Mubarak.

Soldiers did not intervene, other than firing warning shots, during attacks on the anti-government protesters yesterday by Mubarak supporters.

But hours later, soldiers carrying rifles could be seen lining up between the two sides, with several hundred other soldiers moving towards the front line.

The crowds seeking an end to Hosni Mubarak’s nearly three decades in power were still reeling from attacks hours earlier in which Mubarak supporters charged into the square on horses and camels, lashing people with whips, while others rained firebombs and rocks from rooftops.

The protesters accused Mr Mubarak’s regime of unleashing a force of paid thugs and plain-clothes police to crush their unprecedented nine-day movement, a day after the 82-year-old president refused to step down. The protesters showed police ID badges they said were wrested from their attackers. Some government workers said their employers ordered them into the streets.

The violence intensified overnight as sustained bursts of automatic gunfire and single shots rained into the square, starting at around 4am and continuing for more than two hours.

Protest organiser Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance. He said the gunfire came from at least three locations in the distance and that the Egyptian military, which has ringed the square with tanks for days to try to keep order, did not intervene.

Hours after the shooting ended, the army, which protesters have criticised for failing to protect them, moved four tanks to clear a highway overpass from where supporters of Mr Mubarak had been hurling rocks and firebombs on to the protesters.

It was not immediately clear if the steps were part of a wider decision for the army to begin protecting the demonstrations. Footage from AP Television News appeared to show two more dead bodies being dragged along the highway overpass where the Mubarak supporters were massed.

A tank spread a thick smoke screen along the overpass, to the north of the square, in an apparent attempt to deprive attackers of a high vantage point. The two sides seemed to be battling for control of the overpass, which leads to a main bridge over the Nile.

At daybreak, the two sides were still battling with rocks and petrol bombs along the front line on the northern edge of the square, near the famed Egyptian Museum.

Demonstrators took cover behind makeshift barricades of corrugated metal sheeting taken from a nearby construction site and Mubarak supporters held their ground on the overpass until tanks managed to clear them away and seal off the bridge. Between the two sides stretched a burning no-man’s-land of smouldering cars, hunks of concrete and fires.

Two empty troop carriers were burning in front of the museum, though it wasn’t clear if they were targeted deliberately.

Further back in the square, around 4,000 protesters were holding out. A man with a microphone called out the names of the missing – most of them children - from the hours of clashes.

At an open-air clinic in the middle of the square, doctors treated the injured. Dr Amr el-Yamani said most had suffered head injuries from hurled rocks.

The demonstrators appeared to be growing more enraged at the military’s failure to protect them. Soldiers fired occasional shots in the air throughout Wednesday’s clashes but did not appear to otherwise intervene and no uniformed police were seen.

The fighting began more than 12 hours earlier, turning the celebratory atmosphere in the square over the previous day into one of terror and sending a stream of wounded to makeshift clinics in mosques and alleyways on the anti-government side. Three people died in the violence on Wednesday and 600 were injured.

Mustafa el-Fiqqi, a senior official from the ruling National Democratic Party, said that businessmen connected to the ruling party were responsible for what happened.

The notion that the state may have co-ordinated violence against protesters, who had kept a peaceful vigil in Tahrir Square for five days, prompted a sharp rebuke from the Obama administration.

“If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Some of the worst street battles on Wednesday raged near the Egyptian Museum at the edge of the square. Pro-government rioters blanketed the rooftops of nearby buildings and hurled bricks and petrol bombs on to the crowd below – in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds. Plain-clothes police at the building entrances prevented anti-Mubarak protesters from storming up to stop them.

The two sides pummelled each other with chunks of concrete and bottles at each of the six entrances to the sprawling plaza, where 10,000 anti-Mubarak protesters tried to fend off more than 3,000 attackers who besieged them. Some on the pro-government side waved machetes, while the square’s defenders filled the air with a ringing battlefield din by banging metal fences with sticks.

In one almost medieval scene, a small contingent of pro-Mubarak forces on horseback and camels rushed into the anti-government crowds, trampling several people and swinging whips and sticks. Protesters dragged some riders from their mounts, throwing them to the ground and beating them. The horses and camels appeared to be ones used to give tourists rides around Cairo.

Dozens of men and women pried up pieces of pavement with bars and ferried the piles of ammunition in canvas sheets to their allies at the front. Others directed fighters to streets needing reinforcements.

The protesters used a subway station as a makeshift prison for the attackers they managed to catch. They tied the hands and legs of their prisoners and locked them inside.

Some protesters wept and prayed in the square where only a day before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of quarter of a million people, the largest demonstration so far.