Clashes Erupt in Cairo Between Mubarak’s Allies and Foes
Pro-Mubarak demonstrators, below, clashed with anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Wednesday. More Photos »
By ANTHONY SHADID, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
CAIRO — The Egyptian government struck back at its opponents on Wednesday, unleashing waves of pro-government provocateurs armed with clubs, stones, rocks and knives in and around Tahrir Square in a concerted effort to rout the protesters who have called for an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s near-30-year rule.
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Anthony Shadid on New Clashes in Street Protests
Amr Nabil/Associated Press
Pro-Mubarak protesters waved an Egyptian flag in Cairo Wednesday morning. More Photos »
After first trying to respond peacefully, the protesters fought back with rocks and Molotov cocktails as battles broke out around the square. A makeshift medical clinic staffed by dozens of doctors tended to a steady stream of antigovernment protesters, many bleeding from head wounds.
As the two sides exchanged volleys, the military restricted itself mostly to guarding the Egyptian Museum and using water cannons to extinguish flames stoked by the firebombs. And on Wednesday night, state media broadcast an order from the government for all protesters to leave the square.
Signs that the pro-Mubarak forces were organized and possibly professional were abundant. When the melee broke out, a group of them tried to corner a couple of journalists in an alley to halt their reporting. Their assaults on the protesters seemed to come in well-timed waves.
Some protesters reported that they had been approached with offers of 50 Egyptian pounds, about $8.50, to carry pro-Mubarak placards. “Fifty pounds for my country?” one woman said, in apparent disbelief.
The counterattack was undertaken in the face of calls from leaders in Washington and Europe for peaceful and rapid political change, with the Foreign Ministry releasing a defiant statement in the state news media saying that such calls from “foreign parties” had been “rejected and aimed to incite the internal situation in Egypt.”
It followed Mr. Mubarak’s 10-minute television address on Tuesday, in which he pledged to step down within months — an offer that was rejected by his opponents, who have demanded his immediate resignation — and was met with a call by President Obama for a political transition “now” that infuriated Cairo.
“There is a contradiction between calling on the transition to begin now, and the calls which President Mubarak himself has made for an orderly transition,” an Egyptian official said Wednesday. “Mubarak’s primary responsibility is to ensure an orderly and peaceful transfer of power. We can’t do that if we have a vacuum of power.”
The official said that the Egyptian government had “a serious issue with how the White House is spinning this.”
The White House kept up the pressure on the Mubarak government, however, with the presidential spokesman, Robert Gibbs, telling reporters in Washington that “now means yesterday.”
He added: “There are reforms that need to be undertaken. There are opposition entities that need to be in the conversation.”
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain issued a strong statement deploring the violence, adding what appeared to be a veiled threat. “If it turns out that the regime is any way has been sponsoring and tolerating this violence, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable,” he said. “These are despicable scenes that we are seeing, and they should not be repeated.”
Meanwhile, a leading opposition leader in Cairo, Mohamed ElBaradei, issued a statement calling on the military to “intervene decisively to stop this massacre.”
The Egyptian health minister, Ahmed Sameh Farid, said that 596 people had been injured in the battles in Tahrir Square and that one man was killed when he fell off a bridge, The Associated Press reported.
The mayhem and chaos — with riders on horses and camels thundering through the central square — offered a complete contrast to the scenes only 24 hours earlier when hundreds of thousands of antigovernment protesters turned it into a place of jubilant celebration, believing that they were close to overthrowing a leader who has survived longer than any other in modern Egypt.
Such was the nervousness across the Arab world, spreading from its traditional heart in Egypt, that the leader of Yemen offered on Wednesday to step down by 2013 and offered assurances his son would not succeed him — the latest in a series of autocratic leaders bending to the wave of anger engulfing the region.
On Wednesday, the enduring standoff between Mr. Mubarak and his adversaries took an explosive and perilous turn, offering further proof that Mr. Mubarak had no intention of exiting earlier than he had announced. Hours after a call from Egypt’s powerful military for the president’s opponents to “restore normal life,” thousands of men, some carrying fresh flags and newly printed signs supporting Mr. Mubarak, surged into Tahrir Square.
For several hours in the afternoon, from a base in Talaat Harb Square, northeast of Tahrir Square, pro-Mubarak supporters wielding rebar, knives, pliers, long sticks and even a meat cleaver surged toward the antigovernment protesters, under cover of rocks thrown by their confederates in the rear and from a roof of a nearby building.
At regular intervals, men were carried away from the fight bleeding.
A red car and a motorcycle traveled to the front, by the historic Groppi’s café, and shuttled the injured men away to a makeshift medical clinic staffed by dozens of doctors. At about 4 p.m., agitated young men started throwing rocks at the windows of residents, without explanation. Men also threw rocks at the offices of an opposition figure, Ayman Nour, that overlooks the square.
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