Supporters of deposed president Mohamed Mursi chanting slogans while carrying the coffin of the body of a man killed in clashes with security forces near the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque in the Nasr City neighbourhood of Cairo yesterday.
QNA, AFP/Doha/Cairo
An official source at Qatar’s Foreign Ministry yesterday denounced the “alarming” events near the Unknown Soldier Monument in the Nasr City neighbourhood of Cairo. The official condemned the killing of protesters and extended condolences to the victims’ families.
The official called on all Egyptian sides to “exercise restraint and to apply reason and wisdom in order to prevent the shedding” of more Egyptian blood.
The official urged different factions to seek “political understanding so as to return to the peaceful democratic transition path, which was launched by the January 25 Revolution”.
At least 65 people were killed during clashes in Cairo early yesterday, Egypt’s health ministry said, after violence erupted at a demonstration in support of ousted president Mohamed Mursi.
The ministry said nine others had died in violence in Egypt’s second city Alexandria a day earlier, putting the toll in two days of unrest at 74.
The Cairo bloodshed was the worst since Mursi’s ouster by the military on July 3 and prompted domestic and international condemnation, as protesters accused security forces of using live ammunition.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, whose country contributes millions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Egypt, expressed Washington’s “deep concern” about the “bloodshed and violence”.
In a statement, Kerry said Egyptian authorities have “a moral and legal obligation to respect the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression”.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the violence as a massacre. “In Egypt, democracy was massacred, national aspirations were massacred, and now the nation is being massacred,” he said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged “Egyptian authorities to respect the right of peaceful protest, to cease the use of violence against protesters, including live fire, and to hold to account those responsible”.
Egyptian Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, who joined the transitional government that took over after Mursi’s ouster, slammed the “excessive use of force”.
The sheikh of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s top authority, condemned the deaths and called for an inquiry.
“The sheikh of Al-Azhar deplores and condemns the deaths of a number of martyrs who were victims of (Saturday’s) events,” Ahmed al-Tayyeb, who heads the Cairo-based Al-Azhar, said in a statement.