EGYPT: Around 40 pro-Mursi protesters have been wounded during military gunfire in the Sinai city of El Arish

Record ID: 860286

  • Title: EGYPT: Around 40 pro-Mursi protesters have been wounded during military gunfire in the Sinai city of El Arish
  • Date: 5th July 2013
  • Summary: BLOOD STAINS ON THE FLOOR WOUNDED SUPPORTER BEING TREATED
  • Embargoed: 20th July 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Egypt
  • City:
  • Country: Egypt
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3UD5OKUDU41O72336B0VU9LWH
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Around 40 pro-Mursi protesters were wounded during military gunfire in the Sinai city of El Arish on Friday (July 5) supporters said.
    The protesters were hit during a demonstration in front of the governorate building calling for the return of ousted president Mohamed Mursi, who was removed from power by the military.
    Five Egyptian police officers were gunned down in other separate incidents during the day Friday in El Arish, medical sources said, after Islamist gunmen killed a soldier in a separate attack in a nearby town overnight.
    The police officers were shot by gunmen while they were guarding a government building, a checkpoint on the southern outskirts of the town, and the hospital, the sources said.
    A heavy military presence was visible in El Arish as Mursi supporters gathered as wounded protesters were brought in from the governorate demonstration.
    "We found more than 40 cases come in wounded in their legs, the shoulders and their heads. There are three or four cases that are almost dead. It was a peaceful march in front of the governorate building praying al-Asr prayer. The military started firing at them while they were praying. Me, because I am present in the hospital because my father is ill, these wounds and bodies came in in front of me. I place full responsibility on the armed forces, and Sisi, the Israeli invasion didn't do what our armed forces are doing to us," said one Mursi supporter Ibrahim Abo Salem.
    Troops and Mursi supporters also clashed at the other end of the peninsula, in the cities of Suez and Ismailia on the Suez Canal, witnesses and security sources said.
    Security sources said a soldier was killed and two were wounded when a police station in Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip came under rocket fire. The police post is close to the local headquarters of military intelligence.
    Earlier, attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at army checkpoints guarding El Arish airport.
    Islamist militants believed to have links to al Qaeda have established a foothold in the sparsely populated desert peninsula, sometimes in league with local Bedouin smugglers and with Palestinian militants from Gaza.
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