Egyptian army moves in as Prime Minister apologises for attack

Egyptian army tanks and soldiers moved to end violence between anti-government protesters and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s central square today as the prime minister apologised for the attack by regime supporters on anti-government protesters.

Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has vowed to investigate who was behind it.

The protesters accuse the regime of sending a force of paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes to attack them with rocks, sticks and firebombs to crush their movement to oust President Hosni Mubarak.

Prime Minister Shafiq has told state TV: “I offer my apology for everything that happened yesterday because it’s neither logical nor rational.”

The public apology from a top government official was highly unusual.

Shafiq called the attack a “blatant mistake” and promised to investigate “so everyone knows who was behind it.”

Troops had stood by for nearly a day as the two sides battled with rocks, sticks, bottles and firebombs.

Hours after automatic gunfire hit the anti-government protest camp at Tahrir Square, killing at least three protesters, soldiers carrying rifles could be seen lining up between the two sides.

Several hundred other soldiers were moving toward the front line.

Four tanks cleared a highway overpass from where Mubarak supporters had hurled rocks and firebombs onto the protesters.

The pre-dawn firing escalated what appeared to be a well-orchestrated series of assaults on the demonstrators that began when Mubarak supporters charged into the square on horses and camels yesterday, lashing people with whips, while others rained firebombs and rocks from rooftops.

Anti-Mubarak demonstrators traded showers of rocks in a counter-assault that drove their attackers out of the square.

Anti-government protesters took army trucks and set up a makeshift frontline on the northern edge of the square, near the famed Egyptian Museum.

The two sides hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails for much of the night, until sustained bursts of automatic gunfire and powerful single shots rained into the square starting at around 4 am and continuing for more than two hours.

The protesters accused Mubarak’s regime of unleashing a force of paid thugs and plainclothes police to crush their unprecedented nine-day-old movement, a day after the 82-year-old president refused to step down.

They showed off police ID badges they said were wrested from their attackers. Some government workers said their employers ordered them into the streets.

The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force him out by tomorrow.

The notion that the state may have coordinated violence against protesters, who had kept a peaceful vigil in Tahrir Square for five days, prompted a sharp rebuke from Washington, which has considered Egypt its most important Arab ally for decades, and sends it 1.5 billion dollars (£1 billion) a year in aid.

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

Egypt’s Interior Ministry denied sending plainclothes policemen to join the crowds attacking protesters.

Protest organiser Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance before dawn today.

He said the gunfire came from at least three locations in the distance and that the Egyptian military did not intervene.

TV footage appeared to show two more dead bodies being dragged along the highway overpass where the Mubarak supporters were massed.

At one point a tank spread a thick smoke screen along the overpass, just to the north of the square, in an apparent attempt to deprive attackers of a high vantage point.

Farther 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.

Egyptian Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said three people died and at least 611 were injured in Tahrir Square on Wednesday.

One of those killed fell from a bridge near the square; Farid said the man was in civilian clothes but may have been a member of the security forces.

Farid did not say how the other two victims, both young men, were killed.

State TV said Vice President Omar Suleiman called “on the youth to heed the armed forces’ call and return home to restore order.” From the other side, senior anti-Mubarak figure Mohamed ElBaradei demanded the military “intervene immediately and decisively to stop this massacre.”

Protesters emboldened by the uprising in Tunisia took to the streets of Cairo and other cities on January 25 to demand President Mubarak step down.