Egypt Clashes Rage Into Fourth Day

(NewsCore) - Protesters and police engaged in sporadic clashes on Sunday at security headquarters in Cairo as violence raged into a fourth day.

The fighting was sparked by the perceived failure of Egypt's military rulers and police to prevent football-linked violence following a match in the northern city of Port Said on Wednesday that left 74 people dead.

The Port Said clashes have been blamed by protesters and several commentators on ex-members of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak's regime, including his sons Alaa and Gamal who are detained in Torah jail outside Cairo on corruption charges.

At that same jail, a medical wing was being set up to eventually receive Mubarak, who is being treated for a heart condition. He is now being held in a military hospital and facing trial on charges of involvement in the killing of protesters during last year's revolt.

On Sunday, hundreds of riot police blocked off roads leading to the interior ministry headquarters in the center of the capital, firing tear gas to keep dozens of rock-throwing protesters at bay.

Police erected several concrete block walls on the roads leading to the ministry, which has become the nerve center of the skirmishes, while entrenching themselves behind coils of barbed wire.

"There is an insistence (by protesters) on storming the interior ministry and implementing a plot," said Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, whose predecessor was sacked in a cabinet shuffle in November following similar clashes.

Ibrahim said police did not want to harm any "revolutionaries" among the protesters, but were prepared to confront others "who want to ruin the country."

Police earlier moved on protester positions in the rock-strewn streets, firing birdshot and detained medics at a field hospital but later released them, a doctor, Mustafa Nabil, told AFP.

The protesters denied they intended to storm the ministry, several hundred meters (yards) from Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising that overthrew president Mubarak a year ago but left the military in charge.

The health ministry said Saturday that 12 people have been killed in Cairo and the town of Suez since the violence erupted Thursday in response to the failure of authorities to contain clashes at a soccer match in the northern city of Port Said that left more than 70 people dead.

Marchers took to the streets nationwide Friday to demand Egypt's ruling generals cede power immediately, amid charges the military was deliberately sowing chaos to justify its status at the top of the political ladder.

Many of the dead in the soccer riot were thought to have been Ultras -- supporters of Cairo's main club Al Ahly -- set upon by partisans of the local Al Masry side after the Cairo team lost 3-1.

The Ultras played a prominent role in the uprising that overthrew Mubarak, and commentators have fed speculation that pro-Mubarak forces were behind the massacre, or at least complicit in it.

The military has pledged to cede full powers to civilian rule when a president is elected by the end of June, but its opponents believe it intends to hold on to power behind the scenes after a transfer to civilian rule.

Copyright 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.