More than 70 killed in Cairo attack: Muslim Brotherhood

July 27, 2013

Cairo_attack
Cairo, Jul 27: At least 70 people died on Saturday after security forces attacked supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said, adding the toll could be much higher.

Al Jazeera's Egypt television station reported 120 had died and some 4,500 had been injured in the early morning violence on the fringes of a round-the-clock vigil being staged by backers of Morsi near a Cairo mosque.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the shooting started shortly before pre-dawn morning prayers on the fringes of a round-the-clock vigil being staged by backers of Morsi, who was ousted by the army more than three weeks ago.

"They are not shooting to wound, they are shooting to kill," Haddad said. "The bullet wounds are in the head and chest."

A reporter at the scene saw 20 bodies under white sheets laid out on the blood-splattered floor of a field hospital set up at the Brotherhood sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya, a mosque in northeast Cairo.

Other bodies had been taken to different hospitals and as many as 1,000 people had been injured, Haddad said.

Supporters and opponents of Morsi staged mass rival rallies across the country on Friday, bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets and laying bare deep divisions within the Arab world's most populous country.

Well over 200 people have died in violence since the overthrow of Morsi, including at least nine on Friday, most of them Brotherhood supporters.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who played a central role in the overthrow of Morsi following huge demonstrations against his year-long rule, called for Egyptians to rally on Friday to give him a mandate to tackle "violence and terrorism".

Hundreds of thousands heeded his call, but Muslim Brotherhood supporters also staged mass, counter-rallies, demanding the reinstatement of Morsi, who was placed under investigation on Friday for a raft of crimes, including murder.

"Live rounds"

Haddad said police started firing repeated rounds of teargas sometime after 3:00am (0100 GMT) at protesters who had spilled out of the main area of the Rabaa sit-in and were on a main thoroughfare close to 6th October Bridge.

"Through the smog of the gas, the bullets started flying," he said. In addition to "special police forces in black uniforms" firing live rounds, he said that snipers shot from the roofs of a university, buildings in the area, and a bridge.

State news agency MENA quoted an unnamed security source as saying that only teargas was used to disperse protesters. He said no firearms were used.

Haddad said the pro-Morsi supporters had used rocks to try to defend themselves. On the podium outside the Rabaa mosque, a speaker urged people to retreat from the gunfire, but "men stayed to defend themselves because women and children are inside the sit-in", he said.

It was the second time this month there had been a mass killing near Rabaa. On July 8, 53 people died when armed men shot into a crowd after morning prayers close to a Republican Guard compound in the area.

"This is much more brutal because the Republican Guard looked like a tactical military operation. This one looks like a much more brutal aggression," Haddad said.

Egypt's army-installed interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, said on Friday that the month-old Cairo vigils by Morsi supporters would be "brought to an end, soon and in a legal manner", state-run al Ahram news website reported.

Sisi's rising star

There is deepening alarm in the West over the army's move against Morsi. The country of 84 million people forms a bridge between the Middle East and North Africa and receives $1.5 billion a year in mainly military aid from Washington.

Fireworks lit up the night sky over Cairo's central Tahrir Square into the early hours of Saturday, where army supporters rallied clutching posters of Sisi in full ceremonial uniform.

In a sign of the general's rising star, many of the posters depicted him alongside Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, former military officers who went on to become presidents.

The investigation into Morsi centres on accusations that he conspired with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to escape from jail during the 2011 uprising against veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak, killing some prisoners and officers, kidnapping soldiers and torching buildings.

Morsi has said local people helped him escape during the upheavals. Hamas challenged investigators to find "one piece of evidence" that it had meddled in Egyptian affairs.

The Brotherhood has rejected the allegations as "fantasy".

The army has appointed an interim government tasked with preparing for parliamentary elections in about six months followed by a new presidential vote. The Brotherhood says it will not join the process.

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News Network
November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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