Egypt police guard Brotherhood headquarters after violent street battles

Egypt police guard Brotherhood
headquarters after violent street battles
Police deploy heavily at Brotherhood building in Mokattam,
as health ministry spokesman says more than 160 people were injured night
before.


People
fight... Politicians watch

Middle East Online CAIRO: Police
were out in force on Saturday outside the headquarters of Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood a day after more than 160 people were hurt in running street battles
between Islamists and opposition protesters.
A journalist reported a heavy police presence at
the building in the Mokattam neighbourhood, and the official MENA news agency
cited a health ministry spokesman as saying more than 160 people were injured
the night before.
Businesses in the area remained closed, and debris
from the violence was visible everywhere.
We have already cleared away four burnt buses and
three cars," Nasser Abdullah, an official charged with the clean-up,
said.
Hundreds of Brotherhood members, many of whom had
been bussed in the previous day ahead of the opposition protest, were leaving
the complex on Saturday.
Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who has been in
office since last June, is himself a product of the powerful Muslim
Brotherhood.
Friday's violence broke out after opposition
activists marched to the building guarded by police and Brotherhood members. The
two sides pelted each other with stones, emergency services chief Mohammed
Soltan told MENA.
Shots were also heard, but there were no immediate
reports of gunshot casualties.
Police used tear gas against the protesters before
the clashes spilled over elsewhere in the normally calm Cairo
neighbourhood.
Protesters captured and beat three Brotherhood
members and also smashed up an ambulance evacuating one injured Brotherhood
supporter and detained him, a correspondent said.
The Brotherhood has seen about 30 of its offices
across the country attacked in widespread protests against Morsi.
In the Nile Delta city of Mahalla on Friday,
protesters set fire to another of the Brotherhood offices, throwing petrol bombs
at the building, the state news agency MENA reported.
The Brotherhood, well-organised despite decades of
persecution under former strongman Hosni Mubarak and his predecessors, was the
main winner of parliamentary and senate elections last year.
But its critics accuse it and Morsi of mirroring
the tactics used by Mubarak against the opposition.
The Islamists clashed before with opposition
activists, most notoriously in December when at least 11 people were killed in
clashes outside the presidential palace after Morsi adopted extensive powers,
since repealed.