Defiant supporters of deposed president Mohamed Mursi rallied in their thousands across Egypt yesterday demanding his reinstatement, as the interim premier suggested a crackdown on their protest camps was imminent.
Mursi’s Islamist supporters flooded streets in central Cairo and in the second city Alexandria, carrying pictures of the deposed leader and chanting against the military coup that ousted him on July 3.
In the oasis town of Fayyum, south of Cairo, Mursi loyalists clashed with police who fired teargas to disperse them, security officials said.
Pro-Mursi protesters also took to the streets in the central Egyptian city of Assiut, the official Mena agency reported.
The government has said it held off from breaking up the Islamists’ protest camps in Cairo out of respect for the holy month of Ramadan, which ended on Wednesday night, and to give foreign mediators a chance to end the deadlock peacefully.
With the failure of the mediation, the country is bracing for an increasingly inevitable confrontation between the army-installed government and Mursi’s loyalists demanding his reinstatement.
“The government wants to give the protesters, especially the reasonable ones among them, a chance to reconcile and heed the voice of reason,” said Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi.
But he warned, in a statement late Thursday, “that the situation is approaching the moment we would rather avoid”.
The deadlock could lead to a prolonged crisis punctuated by violence, analysts say.
An uptick in attacks, such as the bombing of a police station in a Nile Delta city on July 24, may ensue as more radical Mursi supporters turn to militancy.
“Short of a political agreement, the most likely outcome is a prolonged stalemate, repeated clashes and a transitional process in many ways fundamentally detached from reality,” the International Crisis Group watchdog said.
“Nor should one underestimate the risk that some Islamists, convinced that the democratic process will never make room for them, drift towards violence,” it added.
Many supporters of the coup that overthrew Mursi, after millions rallied demanding his resignation, have pressed the government to crack down on the Islamists.
“A truce for Eid,” read the headline of the state newspaper Al Gomhuria yesterday, as the countdown began to the dispersal of the Cairo protest camps.
Eid al-Fitr ends in Egypt at sunset today.
The main sit-in, in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, has come to resemble a village of tents, raising concerns of a possible carnage if police move in.
“This remains a very fragile situation, which holds not only the risk of more bloodshed and polarisation in Egypt, but also impedes the economic recovery which is so essential for Egypt’s successful transition,” US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and EU envoy Bernardino Leon left Cairo this week without making headway in finding a compromise.
The interim presidency said diplomacy had failed and held Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood responsible “for consequent events and developments relating to violations of the law and endangering public safety”.
Violence on the sidelines of demonstrations between Mursi’s supporters and opponents has killed more than 250 people—mostly Mursi’s backers—since the end of June.
Western envoys pressured the Brotherhood to end the sit-ins and urged the government to release jailed Islamist leaders as a confidence-building measure.