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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

24 dead in 3 days of Cairo anti-military protests


The clashes come in the third straight day of violence that has killed at least 24 people and has turned into the most sustained challenge yet to the rule of Egypt s military. Throughout the day, young activists demanding the military hand over power to a civilian government skirmished with black-clad police, hurling stones and firebombs and throwing back the tear gas canisters being fired by police into the square, which was the epicenter of the protest movement that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February. The night before saw an escalation of the fighting as police launched a heavy assault that tried and failed to clear protesters from the square. In a show of the ferocity of the assault, the death toll leaped from Sunday evening until Monday morning. A constant stream of injured protesters bloodied from rubber bullets or overcome by gas were brought into makeshift clinics set out on sidewalks around the square where volunteer doctors scrambled from patient to patient. The eruption of violence, which began Saturday, reflects the frustration and confusion that has mired Egypt s revolution since Mubarak fell and the military stepped in to take power. It comes only a week before Egypt is to begin the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, which many have hoped would be a significant landmark in a transition to democracy. Instead, the vote has been overshadowed by mounting anger at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which will continue to hold power even after the vote. Activists accuse the generals of acting increasingly in the same autocratic way as Mubarak s regime and fear that they will dominate the coming government, just as they have the current interim one they appointed months ago.