Mass Shooting #11

A found poem, sourced here

The attack, the third mass killing

of Islamist demonstrators since

the military ousted Mr. Morsi six weeks ago,

followed a series of government threats.

But the scale — lasting more than 12 hours,
with armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition

 and snipers — and the ferocity

far exceeded the Interior Ministry’s promises

 of a gradual and measured dispersal.

At least one protester was incinerated in his tent.

 Many others were shot in the head or chest,

 including some who appeared to be in their early teens                               

including the 17-year-old daughter

of a prominent Islamist leader,

 Mohamed el-Beltagy.

At a makeshift morgue 

in one field hospital 
              on
Wednesday morning,

 the number of bodies grew to 12 from 3

in the space of 15 minutes.

“Martyrs, this way,”

 a medic called out

 to direct the men bringing new stretchers;

the hems of women’s abayas

were stained from the pools of blood

covering the floor.

Adli Mansour,

 the figurehead president appointed

by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Size,
declared a state of emergency,

removing any limits on police action

 and returning Egypt to the state of virtual martial law

that prevailed for three decades

under President Hosni Mubarak.

The government imposed a 7 p.m

. curfew in most of the country,

closed the banks and shut down all north-south train service.

The Muslim Brotherhood,

the main Islamist group behind Mr. Morsi,
 reiterated its rejection of violence

but called on Egyptians across the country to rise up

 in protest,

 and its supporters marched toward

 the camps to battle the police with rocks and firebombs.

Clashes and gunfire broke out even

 in well-heeled precincts of the capital far from the protest camps,

leaving anxious residents huddled in their homes

and the streets all but emptied of life.

Angry Islamists attacked

at least a dozen police stations

around the country,

according to the state news media,

killing more than 40 police officers.

And they lashed out at Christians,

attacking or burning seven churches,

according to the interior minister.

Coptic Christian and human rights groups

said the number was far higher.

The crackdown followed six weeks

of attempts by Western diplomats to broker

 a political resolution that might

persuade the Islamists to abandon their protests

 and rejoin a renewed democratic process
 despite the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi,

Egypt’s first freely elected president.

 But the brutality of the attack seemed

to extinguish any such hopes.

The Health Ministry said

that 235 civilians had been killed

and more than a thousand others had been wounded across Egypt.

 But the rate of dead

 and seriously injured people moving

through the field hospitals

at the sit-ins seemed to promise

 the true numbers would be much higher.

The assault prompted

the resignation of the interim vice president,

 Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning

 former diplomat who had lent his reputation

to selling the West on the democratic goals

 of the military takeover.

“We have reached a state of harder polarization

 and more dangerous division,

with the social fabric in danger of tearing,

 because violence only begets violence,”

Mr. El Baradei wrote

 in a public letter

to the president.

“The beneficiaries

 of what happened today are the preachers

 of violence and terrorism,

the most extremist groups,” he said,

 “and you will remember what I am telling you.”

The violence was almost universally

 criticized by Western governments.

A spokesman for President Obama

said the United States was continuing
 to review the $1.5 billion in aid it gives Egypt

annually,

most of which goes to the military.

The spokesman, Josh Earnest,

said the violence

“runs directly counter

to pledges from the interim

 government to pursue reconciliation” with the Islamists.

He said the United States condemned the renewal

of the emergency law and urged respect for basic rights

like the freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstrations.

 But he stopped short of writing

off the interim government, saying the United

 States would continue to remind Egypt’s leaders

of their promises and urge them “to get back on track.”

Analysts said the attack was the clearest sign

yet that the Egyptian police state was re-emerging

 in full force, overriding liberal cabinet officials

                                    like Mr. ElBaradei and ignoring Western
                 diplomatic pressure and talk of cutting financial aid.

“This is the beginning of a systematic

crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood,

other Islamists and other opponents

of a military coup,”

said Emad Shahin, a professor of political science

 at the American University in Cairo.

“In the end,” he added, “the West will back the winning side.”

The attack began about 7 a.m

. when a circle of police officers began

 firing tear gas at the protest camps

and obliterating tents with bulldozers.

Although the Interior Ministry

 had said it would move only gradually

and leave a safe exit, soon after the attack

 began several thousand people appeared

trapped inside the main camp,

 near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque,

 as snipers fired down on those trying to flee

 and riot police officers with tear gas

and birdshot closed in from all sides.

“There is no safe passage,”

 said Mohamed Abdel Azeem, 25, a wholesaler,

 who had braved sniper fire

to reach a field hospital.

For a time in the late afternoon,

the Islamists succeeded in pushing the

police back far enough to create

an almost safe passage

to a hospital building

On the edge of what 

remained of their camp.

Only a roughly 20-yard stretch

            in front of the hospital doors 
was still vulnerable to sniper fire 
from above,

and 
a series of Islamist
marchers from around 
the city flowed
back into the
encampment bolstering
its numbers.

                                                                                                            
 But shortly before
soldiers and police officers                                                                                         
 renewed their push, 
and the Islamists

                        
                                                       were forced at last to flee.

                                  
  Three journalists were reportedly

 killed in the fighting:

a cameraman for Sky News,

                                    the Britain-based news network;

                          
                                                           a reporter for a newspaper

                                   based in the United Arab Emirates;

and a reporter 
for an Egyptian state newspaper.

                                                          Several others were arrested.

Egyptian state news

media played down the violence,

reporting that the police were

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the camps

“in a highly civilized way.”

 In a televised address,

Mohamed Ibrahim, interior minister

under Mr. Morsi and now under the new government,

 said his forces “insisted on maintaining the highest degrees of self-restraint.”

Later, state television showed

footage of a group of dead bodies

it said were discovered under the main stage

of the Islamist sit-in, corroborating dark rumors in

the anti-Islamist news media.

But it appeared to be a gruesome setup:

journalists, including a reporter for The New York Times,

had visited the area below the stage

repeatedly in                           recent days and found it empty,                     without any bodies.

Although journalists

saw at least a few Islamists

 with guns on Wednesday,

there was also no evidence

that the Islamists had stockpiled large numbers of

w

            e

a

            p

     o

            n

     s

inside the camp,

as Egyptian state news media

had said before the attack.

But in a televised statement,

Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister

and a Western-trained economist

 who had been considered a liberal,

 cited the Islamists’ supposed stockpiling

of weapons and ammunition to argue

 that the use of force was justified to protect the

 rights of other citizens.

“Things were

spiraling out of control, and we decided

 to take a firm stance,” he said.

By nightfall the Islamists had established new sit-ins

outside a landmark

mosque in Cairo

 and others in cities around the country, defying the new curfew

 and the interior minister’s vows to break up any such assemblies.

                                          

“Is this closer to being resolved

tonight than last night?”

asked Michael Wahid Hanna, a researcher on Egypt

 with the New York-based Century Foundation who was visiting Cairo.

“Obviously not. I don’t think anybody has thought this through fully.”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed

 reporting from Cairo,

and Alan Cowel

from London.