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Egyptians Cope With Mourning and Shock a Day After Brutal Clashes
ElBaradei to Be Named Egypt’s Prime Minister, Spokewoman Says
(about 1 hour later)
CAIRO — Egyptians buried their dead and treated their wounded on Saturday while struggling to come to terms with widespread street violence that left more than 30 people dead and 1,400 injured the previous day.
CAIRO — Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, will be named as Egypt’s interim prime minister, his spokewoman said Saturday.
Rubble, shattered glass and spent shotgun shells littered intersections and bridges in Cairo, where battles between Islamist supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and those celebrating his removal by the military on Wednesday raged into the early morning.
News of his appointment came shortly after the Egyptian media said Mr. ElBaradei had been summoned to the presidential palace by Egypt’s interim president, Adli Mansour.
The Health Ministry said the death toll since the violence began on Friday had risen to 36, with about 1,400 wounded nationwide.
Mr. ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his work with International Atomic Energy Agency, said earlier this week that he had worked hard to convince Western powers of what he called the necessity of forcibly ousting President Mohamed Morsi, contending that Mr. Morsi had bungled the country’s transition to an inclusive democracy.
Many were shocked by the level of violence and by the abundance of guns in the hands of the combatants, whose stark disagreement over who should be ruling the country followed them into hospital wards. A Coptic priest was shot dead in the northern Sinai Peninsula, and a video circulated showing what appeared to be Islamists pushing two youths from a concrete tower atop a building.
In the interview, Mr. ElBaradei also defended the widening arrests of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and the shutdown of Islamist television networks that followed the removal of Mr. Morsi on Wednesday by Egypt’s generals.
The violence was the most widespread since the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and many feared that it would make it harder for the country’s deeply divided populace to again accept the authority of a single leader.
“We have no idea what’s going on,” said Mohamed Ahmed 27, standing near the bed of a friend, Mohamed Ali, in Qasr al-Aini Hospital in Cairo. Mr. Ali had been shot in the abdomen and sprayed with birdshot in his back during a clash near Cairo University with pro-Morsi marchers.
“It’s a nightmare,” Mr. Ahmed said. “I don’t understand anything.”
The director of the hospital’s emergency unit, Hisham Abu Aisha, said Saturday that the hospital had admitted 83 injured people from the previous night’s clashes in various Cairo neighborhoods. Most had been shot with birdshot, while others had been stabbed, beaten or hit with rocks.
Four bodies had been taken to the hospital, and another person had died in the emergency room.
Most disconcerting, Dr. Abu Aisha said, were the 15 people who had arrived with gunshot wounds, indicating a presence of guns among protesters that many in Cairo would have once found unthinkable.
Dr. Abu Aisha said the hardest part was the continuation of street fights in the sprawling hospital’s wards.
“There were dead and wounded from both sides, and they wanted to finish each other off, so they beat each other inside the hospital,” he said. “There is no agreement and everyone is sticking to their views and we can’t come up with a plan to move the country forward.”
In the surgery ward, Mohamed Ibrahim, 20, recalled seeing someone shot dead next to him and then watching his twin brother, Ahmed, collapse after being shot twice in the abdomen in a clash with pro-Morsi marchers.
“We want there to be stability — not people getting shot every day,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “We’ll let anyone rule as long as there is stability.”
He said both he and his brother had voted for Mr. Morsi, hoping that he would use Islam to improve life for Egyptians, but they had given up on him when life got worse for the general population. He reserved judgment on Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, leader of the armed forces, who described the military’s intervention into politics as a step toward healing the country.
“We’ll see if he does anything good or if he’ll say he’s with the people and do nothing, like the others who came before,” Mr. Ibrahim said.
Also Saturday, security officials said Khairat el-Shater, the powerful financier and strategist of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, had been arrested. About 200 Brotherhood members were put on arrest lists after Mr. Morsi’s ouster. Some prominent members have been released, while others remain detained.
Adli Mansour, the interim president appointed by the military, met with General Sisi, who is also the defense minister, and with the interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, at the presidential palace that had been occupied by Mr. Morsi just last week.
Mr. Mansour, a former chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, has spoken publicly only once since his swearing-in, and it remains unclear when he will select a cabinet and how much power it will have. Islamist supporters who consider Mr. Morsi’s removal a military coup continued their sit-in in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City and in front of the officers’ club of the Republican Guard, where some believe Mr. Morsi is being held. The authorities have given no information on Mr. Morsi’s location since his ouster.
“Why are we here today?” a bearded cleric in a white robe asked the crowd over a loudspeaker.
“Allah!” the crowd yelled.
“What do we demand in this place?” he asked.
“Morsi!” they screamed.
A moment later, he waved a cloth red with what he said was the blood of one of the four “martyrs” who had been fatally shot by security forces there the day before.
“We will never surrender,” the cleric vowed. “They will try to wage a psychological war on us, they’ll try to trick us.”
In Washington on Friday, the State Department condemned the violence and called for restraint.
“We call on all Egyptian leaders to condemn the use of force and to prevent further violence among their supporters,” said Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.
