(Reuters) - At least 42 people were killed
on Monday when Islamist demonstrators
enraged by the military overthrow of
Egypt's elected President Mohamed Mursi
said the army opened fire during morning
prayers at the Cairo barracks where he is
being held.
But the military said "a terrorist group" tried to storm
the Republican Guard compound and one army officer
had been killed and 40 wounded. Soldiers returned fire
when they were attacked by armed assailants, a
military source said.
The emergency services said more than 320 were
wounded in a sharp escalation of Egypt's political
crisis, and Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood urged people to
rise up against the army, which they accuse of a
military coup to remove the elected leader.
At a hospital near the Rabaa Adawia mosque where
Islamists have camped out since Mursi was toppled on
Wednesday, rooms were crammed with people wounded
in the violence, sheets were stained with blood and
medics rushed to attend to the wounded.
As an immediate consequence, the ultra-conservative
Islamist Nour party, which initially backed the military
intervention, said it was withdrawing from stalled
negotiations to form an interim government for the
transition to fresh elections.
The military has said that the overthrow was not a
coup, and it was enforcing the will of the people after
millions took to the streets on June 30 to call for his
resignation.
But pro- and anti-Mursi protests took place in Cairo,
Alexandria and other cities, and resulted in clashes on
Friday and Saturday that left 35 dead.
It leaves the Arab world's largest nation of 84 million
people in a perilous state, with the risk of further
enmity between people on either side of the political
divide while an economic crisis deepens.
SHOTS DURING PRAYERS
Abdelaziz Abdelshakua, from Sharqia Province
northeast of Cairo, was wounded in his right leg with
what he says was a live round.
"We were praying the dawn prayer and we heard there
was shooting," he said, adding an army officer assured
them no one was shooting, then suddenly they came
under fire from the direction of the Republican Guard.
"They shot us with teargas, birdshot, rubber bullets --
everything. Then they used live bullets."
A Reuters journalist at the scene saw first aid helpers
attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dying man.
Al Jazeera's Egypt channel showed footage from
inside a makeshift clinic near the scene of the violence,
where Mursi supporters attempted to treat bloodied
men.
Seven dead bodies were lined up in a row, covered in
blankets and an Egyptian flag. A man placed a
portrait of Mursi on one of the corpses.
Footage broadcast by state TV showed Mursi
supporters throwing rocks at soldiers in riot gear on
one of the main roads leading to Cairo airport.
Young men, some carrying sticks, crouched behind a
building, emerging to throw petrol bombs before
retreating again.
State-run television showed soldiers carrying a wounded
comrade along a rock-strewn road, and news footage
zoomed in on a handful of protesters firing crude
handguns during clashes.
The rest of the city was for the most part calm, though
armoured military vehicles closed bridges over the Nile
to traffic following the violence.
The military overthrew Mursi on Wednesday after mass
nationwide demonstrations led by youth activists
demanding his resignation. The Brotherhood denounced
the intervention as a coup and vowed peaceful
resistance.
POLITICAL IMPASSE
Talks on forming a new government were already in
trouble before Monday's shooting, after the Nour Party
rejected two liberal-minded candidates for prime minister
proposed by interim head of state Adli Mansour.
Nour, Egypt's second biggest Islamist party, which is
vital to give the new authorities a veneer of Islamist
backing, said it had withdrawn from the negotiations in
protest at what it called the "massacre at the
Republican Guard (compound)".
"The party decided the complete withdrawal from
political participation in what is known as the road
map," it said.
The military can ill afford a lengthy political vacuum at
a time of violent upheaval and economic stagnation.
Scenes of running street battles between pro- and anti-
Mursi demonstrators in Cairo, Alexandria and cities
across the country have alarmed Egypt's allies,
including key aid donors the United States and Europe,
and Israel, with which Egypt has had a U.S.-backed
peace treaty since 1979.
The violence has also shocked Egyptians, growing tired
of the turmoil that began two-and-a-half years ago with
the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in a popular
uprising.
In one of the most shocking scenes of the last week,
video footage circulated on social and state media of
what appeared to be Mursi supporters throwing two
youths from a concrete tower on to a roof in the port
city of Alexandria.
The images, stills from which were published on the
front page of the state-run Al-Akhbar newspaper on
Sunday, could not be independently verified.
On Sunday, huge crowds numbering hundreds of
thousands gathered in different parts of Cairo and were
peaceful, but nonetheless a reminder of the risks of
further instability.
BITTER BLOW
For many Islamists, the overthrow of Egypt's first
freely elected president was a bitter reversal that
raised fears of a return to the suppression they endured
for decades under autocratic rulers like Mubarak.
On the other side of the political divide, millions of
Egyptians were happy to see the back of a leader they
believed was orchestrating a creeping Islamist takeover
of the state - a charge the Brotherhood has vehemently
denied.
Washington has not condemned the military takeover or
called it a coup, prompting suspicion within the
Brotherhood that it tacitly supports the overthrow.
Obama has ordered a review to determine whether
annual U.S. assistance of $1.5 billion, most of which
goes to the Egyptian military, should be cut off as
required by law if a country's military ousts a
democratically elected leader.
Egypt can ill afford to lose foreign aid. The country
appears headed for a looming funding crunch unless it
can quickly access money from overseas. The local
currency has lost 11 percent of its value since late last
year.
(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla, Ashraf
Fahim, Asma Alsharif, Mike Collett-White, Alexander
Dziadosz, Maggie Fick, Tom Finn, Sarah McFarlane,
Tom; Perry, Yasmine Saleh, Paul Taylor and Patrick

What's with the use of the word Islamist, ain't they egyptians too, smh for foreign media.

@topic egyptians should watch it before their country is taken from them