CAIRO, July 8. / ITAR-TASS /. Dozens of people were killed in fights near the headquarters of the presidential guard in Cairo today at dawn.
According to available information, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have committed the attack on the guards in an attempt to rescue suspended president Mohammed Morsi from the headquarters, as he has been reportedly held there since July 3.
Egyptian television citing Egypt's Ministry of Health reported that 42 people have died. The Islamists, however, talk about 53 dead, including five children. More than a thousand people were injured. Among the victims was a member of the security forces.
The collisions were followed by the arrests of more than 200 fighters of Islamist movements, among which, according to some sources, were members of the Syrian opposition.
After the morning fighting the entrances to the Egyptian capital are fully blocked: the traffic on several bridges and overpasses stopped, military posts have been located on major highways and interstates, rows of barbed wire have been strung. Information about the shootout near the University of Cairo, where the Islamists also settled for some time, keeps coming through.
Call for an uprising
In the midst of recent events, Muslim Brotherhood openly called on their supporters to revolt "for the return of their stolen revolution" and demanded the restoration of President Mohamed Morsi. Leaders of the political wing of the Islamists - Freedom and Justice Party /FJP/ - stated that their activists "will not leave the streets until Morsi will be released and reinstated as president of Egypt."
"The international community should intervene and remove its cover of the military junta that came to power. This is necessary to prevent a recurrence of the events of Syria in Egypt," – writes a document released by FJP.
Representatives of the Salafi party An-Nur have already announced their withdrawal from the negotiations with the interim authorities in the process of forming a government. "We have decided on the immediate termination of participation in the negotiations in response to the massacre, which staged near the military barracks of the Republican Guard", said the representative of the An-Nur Nader Bakkar.
More often are heard warnings that the country is sliding towards civil war. Meanwhile, as the temporary presidential aide on media issues Ahmed al-Muslimani, which these days is the keynote speaker on behalf of the authorities, said today, "forecasts that Egypt will repeat the Algerian scenario of the beginning of the 1990s, when after the elections the Islamists launched a protracted civil war in the country that lasted for decades, have no grounds."