Egypt: Military accused of killing over 100 Muslim Brotherhood followers

Many aimed chants at Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the armed forces, saying: “The people want to execute the butcher.”

Gehad El-Haddad, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, on Saturday said the army had been “shooting to kill”, rather than “shooting to wound” when trying to disperse the protesters.

“The bullet wounds are in the head and chest,” he said. Witnesses also reported snipers firing from rooftops.

_{Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi carry an injured man to a field hospital following clashes with security forces at Nasr City. (AP)}

Egypt’s health ministry, however, put the death toll much lower, while security forces insisted they had not used live fire, only tear gas, and blamed the clashes on the Islamists.

The confrontation, in the early hours of Saturday morning, had followed a day when both pro and anti-Morsi demonstrators had held two huge rival protests in Cairo.

It came as the climax to weeks of anger over the ousting of Mr Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, in a military coup.

Three weeks ago, 50 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were killed when the army opened fire outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.

But this weekend’s violence, the worst since Mr Mubarak, was overthrown as president during the revolution in 2011, was markedly worse and drew international condemnation.

_{Protesters clash with riot police in Nasr City in the early hours of Saturday. (AFP)}

It leaves the political situation in the country dangerously poised.

The threat of violence had been apparent since Wednesday, when General al-Sisi first called for mass rallies on Friday to give Egypt’s new military rulers a mandate to fight “violence and terrorism.”

Supporters of Mr Morsi, who was ousted on July 3, took his words as a disturbing coded message that they would no longer be tolerated, and that their sit-ins and rallies around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in east Cairo would be broken up.

On Friday the storm broke. Conflicting reports emerged as to the exact course of events, but officials claimed the Muslim Brotherhood supporters had tried to move away from the mosque, along the airport road towards the military parade ground where President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

“The crowds were trying to push out of Rabaa and block the road,” one policeman told The Sunday Telegraph, standing on a street corner littered with rocks from the fight.

“My troops asked them to go back and they refused and so we fired tear gas. We did not use live ammunition.”

Several witnesses at the scene, however, gave a much different account.

One group of Mr Morsi’s supporters said some of the protesters had tried to march toward a nearby overpass, when they were met by a volley of tear gas from the police.

They said the demonstrators had responded by hurling rocks and stones at the security forces, before the police then opened fire.

“There were snipers on the rooftops, I could hear the bullets whizzing past me,” said Ahmed el Nashar, 34, a media consultant for the Muslim Brotherhood, choking back his tears. “Man, people were just dropping.”

Mahmoud Ibrahim, a member of the brotherhood involved in the protests, said: “They kill us and then accuse of being terrorists.”

Aya Alaa, 28, was among those who tried to help the wounded.

She said: “First, we had a field hospital but that was not enough for the casualties. So we used the media centre, but that was not enough. So we pushed sheltering women from remaining mosque and used that too.”

Outside the mosque on Saturday, thousands gathered to pray, but their prayers were broken up by ambulances driving through the crowds to carry the wounded.

Leaning out of the window of his car, a man pulled up alongside the kerb to give his verdict.

“This is like a war. Sisi is killing people in the street who have nothing but an opinion,” he said.

By midday on Saturday, medical workers had begun ferrying bodies wrapped in white shrouds to hospitals, carrying them on blood-soaked stretchers past a furious throng of Morsi loyalists.

“Allahu akbar! [God is greatest],” chanted the crowd that formed a corridor to waiting ambulances.

Some wept, and women ululated as each body was taken from the makeshift morgue in a marble-floored section of the mosque.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, condemned the use of force against protesters.

“I call on all sides to refrain from violence,” he said. “Now is the time for dialogue, not confrontation. It is the responsibility of leaders on all sides to take steps to reduce tensions.”

John Kerry later said Egypt's leaders must act now to pull their country "back from the brink".

The US Secretary of State said he had spoken to two senior officials of Egypt's interim government - Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy - to voice "deep concern about the bloodshed and violence in Cairo and Alexandria over the past 24 hours that has claimed the lives of scores of Egyptian demonstrators and injured more than 1,000 people."

Mr Morsi was removed by the military when, in the eyes of many, he became too authoritarian. On Saturday, the country’s interim government announced that he would be taken to the same prison which holds Mr Mubarak.

Adly Mansour, the interim president, said that his government seeks to include everyone, but it will not accept lawlessness, blocked roads and attacks on state institutions. He urged the pro-Morsi protesters to go home, promising they won’t be pursued or arrested.