More than 70 killed in Cairo attack: Muslim Brotherhood

July 27, 2013

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Cairo, Jul 27: At least 70 people died on Saturday after security forces attacked supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said, adding the toll could be much higher.

Al Jazeera's Egypt television station reported 120 had died and some 4,500 had been injured in the early morning violence on the fringes of a round-the-clock vigil being staged by backers of Morsi near a Cairo mosque.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the shooting started shortly before pre-dawn morning prayers on the fringes of a round-the-clock vigil being staged by backers of Morsi, who was ousted by the army more than three weeks ago.

"They are not shooting to wound, they are shooting to kill," Haddad said. "The bullet wounds are in the head and chest."

A reporter at the scene saw 20 bodies under white sheets laid out on the blood-splattered floor of a field hospital set up at the Brotherhood sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya, a mosque in northeast Cairo.

Other bodies had been taken to different hospitals and as many as 1,000 people had been injured, Haddad said.

Supporters and opponents of Morsi staged mass rival rallies across the country on Friday, bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets and laying bare deep divisions within the Arab world's most populous country.

Well over 200 people have died in violence since the overthrow of Morsi, including at least nine on Friday, most of them Brotherhood supporters.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who played a central role in the overthrow of Morsi following huge demonstrations against his year-long rule, called for Egyptians to rally on Friday to give him a mandate to tackle "violence and terrorism".

Hundreds of thousands heeded his call, but Muslim Brotherhood supporters also staged mass, counter-rallies, demanding the reinstatement of Morsi, who was placed under investigation on Friday for a raft of crimes, including murder.

"Live rounds"

Haddad said police started firing repeated rounds of teargas sometime after 3:00am (0100 GMT) at protesters who had spilled out of the main area of the Rabaa sit-in and were on a main thoroughfare close to 6th October Bridge.

"Through the smog of the gas, the bullets started flying," he said. In addition to "special police forces in black uniforms" firing live rounds, he said that snipers shot from the roofs of a university, buildings in the area, and a bridge.

State news agency MENA quoted an unnamed security source as saying that only teargas was used to disperse protesters. He said no firearms were used.

Haddad said the pro-Morsi supporters had used rocks to try to defend themselves. On the podium outside the Rabaa mosque, a speaker urged people to retreat from the gunfire, but "men stayed to defend themselves because women and children are inside the sit-in", he said.

It was the second time this month there had been a mass killing near Rabaa. On July 8, 53 people died when armed men shot into a crowd after morning prayers close to a Republican Guard compound in the area.

"This is much more brutal because the Republican Guard looked like a tactical military operation. This one looks like a much more brutal aggression," Haddad said.

Egypt's army-installed interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, said on Friday that the month-old Cairo vigils by Morsi supporters would be "brought to an end, soon and in a legal manner", state-run al Ahram news website reported.

Sisi's rising star

There is deepening alarm in the West over the army's move against Morsi. The country of 84 million people forms a bridge between the Middle East and North Africa and receives $1.5 billion a year in mainly military aid from Washington.

Fireworks lit up the night sky over Cairo's central Tahrir Square into the early hours of Saturday, where army supporters rallied clutching posters of Sisi in full ceremonial uniform.

In a sign of the general's rising star, many of the posters depicted him alongside Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, former military officers who went on to become presidents.

The investigation into Morsi centres on accusations that he conspired with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to escape from jail during the 2011 uprising against veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak, killing some prisoners and officers, kidnapping soldiers and torching buildings.

Morsi has said local people helped him escape during the upheavals. Hamas challenged investigators to find "one piece of evidence" that it had meddled in Egyptian affairs.

The Brotherhood has rejected the allegations as "fantasy".

The army has appointed an interim government tasked with preparing for parliamentary elections in about six months followed by a new presidential vote. The Brotherhood says it will not join the process.

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News Network
November 21,2024

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Hamas says the Israeli regime’s sole objective lies in “erasing” the entirety of the Palestinian population from across the Palestinian territories.

Khalil al-Hayya, a ranking official with the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement, made the remarks to the Palestinian al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday.

“The occupation targets everyone—it strikes hospitals, civil defense, women, children, and the elderly,” he said, adding that the regime sought to “empty Gaza of its residents, and displace the Palestinian people to fulfill its dreams of building a Zionist Jewish state across all of Palestine.”

The remarks came amid the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the coastal sliver that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“This unprecedented aggression in modern times evokes scenes from the dark ages of human history, having crossed all red lines and exceeded every expectation of brutality in the modern era,” the Palestinian official lamented.

He also regretted that the regime had added “systematic and dangerous starvation to its aggression, falsely claiming before the world that it allows 250 [aid] trucks into Gaza daily. In reality, the number of trucks is far fewer.”

Hayya, meanwhile, regretted that “scenes of children torn apart, women screaming over their children, and heart-wrenching destruction have failed to stir enough humanity to stop these crimes.”

He decried the United States for vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that are aimed at bringing about a potential ceasefire in the war, saying this indicated Washington’s “partnership in the aggression” and a simultaneous siege that the Israeli regime has been enforcing on Gaza.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official asserted that, despite what the Israeli official is after, Hamas would not hand over the regime’s captives “without [the regime’s] stopping the war.”

He called Netanyahu “the main obstacle” in the way of cessation of the aggression, saying the Israeli premier “blocks any progress for political reasons,” and citing his preventing conclusion of a ceasefire agreement in July.

Hayya also warned that the regime sought to expand the war beyond Gaza, but asserted that its goals are “impossible and will never happen.”

“Today, the enemy exposes its true intentions of extermination and displacement, but it will fail,” he stressed.

“The Palestinian people are resilient and will not surrender, as they believe in their humanitarian and political cause. The enemy and its allies will not succeed in achieving their goals. This steadfast people will endure, and the occupation will not prevail against them.”

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News Network
November 15,2024

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Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has killed or captured 69 terrorists linked to the Israeli spy agency Mossad during a major counterterrorism drill in the country's southeast, its spokesman says.  

General Ahmad Shafaei, the spokesman for the “Martyrs of Security” drill, said Friday that a total of 23 terrorists have been killed and another 46 arrested in various clean-up operations ever since the IRGC Ground Force launched it in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on November 1.

Seven terrorists have also turned themselves in during the period.

“The undeniable fact about terrorists is that they rely on arrogant powers, particularly the intelligence service of the wicked and vicious Zionist regime," Shafaei said.

“Unfortunately, weapons and munitions at terrorists’ disposal are among the most sophisticated ones in the world. This accounts for their heavy dependence.” 

The official stated that several members of the disbanded terror teams were non-Iranian nationals, who had been hired by foreign intelligence agencies to carry out acts of sabotage and terror inside Iran.

In a most recent operation, six terrorists were arrested and four others were eliminated, three of whom were non-Iranians, he added. 

On October 26, ten members of Iran's law enforcement forces were killed in a terrorist attack in the Gohar Kuh district of Taftan in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

The so-called Jaish al-Adl terrorist group claimed responsibility for the assault, which was one of the deadliest in the province in recent months.

The group has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Iran, primarily in Sistan and Baluchestan.

Its tactics include the abduction of border guards as well as targeting civilians and police stations within the province to incite chaos and disorder.

In January, Iran launched a military operation during which the headquarters of the Pakistan-based terrorist group was targeted in missile strikes, destroying its infrastructure.

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News Network
November 26,2024

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The extremist Israeli finance minister has called for the occupation of the Gaza Strip and halving the population of the Palestinian territory that is reeling from almost 14 months of genocide.  

Bezalel Smotrich, who has a history of racist statements against Palestinians, made the controversial remarks during a conference of the Yesha Council settler group on Monday.

“We can occupy Gaza and thin the population by half within two years,” through encouraging the so-called “voluntary emigration," he said.

The racist minister also urged the Tel Aviv regime to use its favorable ties with the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump to implement the plan.

“Occupying Gaza is not a dirty word,” he further claimed.

Once the success of the “voluntary emigration" is proven in the besieged Gaza Strip, it can be replicated in the occupied West Bank, he added.

Last month, Smotrich urged the full annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, asserting that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

However, nearly 14 months into the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives of finding captives held in Gaza and eliminating Hamas.

So far, the occupying regime has killed at least 44,235 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 104,638 others, in Gaza. 

It has been committing the war crimes of starvation and of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population in the besieged territory.

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