At least 51 protesters killed in Egypt as army opens fire 'like pouring rain'
The Guardian, Monday 8 July 2013 21.03 BST
On several floors of Cairo's Health Insurance hospital, room after room was filled with bloodied, moaning protesters, many of them waiting to be treated. Supporters queued up to donate blood as doctors rushed more wounded past them on stretchers. Security officials screamed at journalists to leave; families of victims implored them to stay.
By the end of Monday at least 51 protesters had died and more than 400 had been injured in one of the bloodiest incidents in Egypt's recent history.
It began, according to the wounded, as dawn prayers were ending. Hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, had knelt in Salah Salem Street, one of Cairo's main thoroughfares, outside the headquarters of Egypt's Republican Guards at first light on Monday when the imam's chants were shattered by the sound of gunshots.
"It was like pouring rain," said Mohamed Atia, one of the hundreds injured in the subsequent bloodbath, speaking in hospital. A pool of dried blood darkened his once-grey trousers, the gunshot wound to his shoulder still awaiting medical attention. "They started shooting teargas and then live ammunition. We were shouting 'peaceful, peaceful', but the shooting continued."
Mohamed Saber el-Sebaei lay with a dirty bandage around his head, blood caking his eyes shut. "There were dawn prayers and then I heard someone calling for help, so the imam finished the prayers quickly," he said.
"Just before we finished, the shooting started. The army units that were standing in front of the Republican Guard headquarters first started shooting teargas, then live ammunition above people's heads … I was taking cover with another guy behind some rubble and I felt something hit my head. I held my prayer mat in my hand and I started to cover my head with it. But I couldn't stop the bleeding because there was so much blood."
A third injured man, Abdel Aziz Abdel Shokor, crippled by a live round to his leg, swore that no one had provoked the assault. "I swear to God no one was doing anything," he said. In post-revolutionary Cairo, now more divided than ever after the toppling of Morsi last Wednesday, the narrative of history is rarely straightforward. On Monday the city was awash with claims and counterclaims about whether the bloody events had been provoked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...rhood-military