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Bombings Leave Egyptians Anxious on Third Anniversary of Uprising
As Egypt Marks 3rd Anniversary of Uprising, Not All Celebrate
(about 2 hours later)
CAIRO — The capital was empty and anxious Saturday morning on the third anniversary of the Egyptian uprising as the residents braced for rival demonstrations for and against the current military-backed government amid renewed fears of violence.
CAIRO — Thousands of Egyptians celebrated the third anniversary of their revolt against autocracy on Saturday by holding a giant rally for Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the military leader who ousted the country’s first democratically elected president last summer and now stands poised to succeed him.
Families stayed close to home and some public facilities closed, reeling in the aftermath of four bombings on Friday that killed six people and terrified the city. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a Sinai-based militant Islamist group that has raised the banner of armed insurgency against the new government, appeared to claim responsibility for the four bombings, including a powerful car bomb in front of a security headquarters and three smaller attacks on police. By 8 a.m. Saturday morning, another small bomb had exploded near a police training facility but officials said it damaged only the walls and injured no one.
Smaller demonstrations organized by Islamists and left-leaning activists held counterdemonstrations against the military takeover, in one case chanting back and forth against each other as much as against their common foe, the new government. But within as little as 15 minutes riot police officers began firing tear gas cannons and shooting guns into the air, swiftly dispersing the protests and leaving the day to General Sisi.
Friday’s bombings were the clearest sign yet that Egypt is entering a prolonged and violent struggle between the military-backed government and a growing Islamist insurgency. They left in their aftermath a grim realization that a cycle of terrorism and repression is hardening the determination of each side to fight to the death, all but extinguishing the three-year-old dream of an inclusive democracy and open debate.
At least eight people were killed in clashes with the police around the country on Saturday, including six in greater Cairo, security officials said.
“The timing is a message that the third anniversary of the revolution will not be a celebration; they want to color it with blood,” said Moataz Abdel-Fattah, a political scientist at the American University of Cairo. “And it will only darken the political waters, with more people calling for a hard-line stance against the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters.”
Coming a day after four bombings around the capital killed at least six people and clashes with the police killed another eight, the rally for Genral Sisi attested to the momentum behind his presumed presidential campaign. But the enthusiasm also hinted at some of the outsize expectations he may face in office, as some hheralded him as the savior of Egypt and its revolutionary dreams.
Within two hours of the first and largest explosion, a car bombing at dawn outside a security headquarters, a crowd of at least 200 had gathered at the police line to cheer for Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who deposed President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last summer and is now poised to succeed him. “The people want the execution of the Brothers,” they chanted, blaming the Brotherhood for the attack in a bloodthirsty imitation of the calls that rang out three years ago calling for “the fall of the regime.”
Hassan Shehab, 52, a shopkeeper who carried through the rally a poster of a son killed by security forces during the 2011 uprising, said he believed General Sisi would “turn Egypt from a third-world country to a first-world country” while bringing justice for the revolution’s “martyrs.”
A government statement evoked the earlier battle against a militant Islamist insurgency that flared here in the 1990s, vowing to “uproot it once again” and “show neither pity nor mercy.”
“He will hold the police accountable and put them on trial, as soon as they get rid of the terrorism of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Shehab said. If not, “there will be another revolution,” he added, advising General Sisi not to “risk the trust of 90 million people.”
“Everything is left now to the army and the police, there is no politics in Egypt,” said Fahmy Howeidy, a veteran columnist considered sympathetic to political Islam. “And if you close the door against peaceful solutions, you should expect violence as an alternative.”
The Brotherhood, an eight-decades-old missionary group, sponsored the most successful party in Egypt’s first free elections in June 2012. Its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, became president, a position he held until he was ousted by the military in July.
The explosions occurred just hours after Ansar Beit al-Maqdis had warned Egyptian security officers in a video message to “escape with your weapons” because “we will target you as we target your leaders.”
The military has been portraying the Brotherhood as a terrorist threat ever since. On Friday, government officials quickly blamed the it or the day’s four bombings.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis often quotes the leaders of Al Qaeda in video messages. Those Qaeda leaders, in turn, drew their inspiration from an ideology forged in Egyptian jails under previous crackdowns on Islamists by Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak. With the group’s emergence, a militant strand of Islamist radicalism will have come full circle.
By Saturday, though, a young Islamist militant group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis had claimed responsibility for them on jihadi websites. A Sinai-based group whose name means Supporters of Jerusalem, the organization has claimed responsibility for a campaign of bombings and assassinations targeting security forces since the authorities began a deadly crackdown on the Brotherhood and other Islamists. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and the Brotherhood are publicly critical of each other, but supporters of the new government insist they are one and the same.
“We tell our dear nation that these attacks were only the first drops of rain, so wait for what is coming up,” Ansar Beit al-Maqdis declared in a statement on Jihadi websites taking responsibility for the blasts, according to a report by The Associated Press. The group warned Egyptians “to stay away from the police and security headquarters” and added, “we try to avoid inflicting harm to the Muslims.”
“We tell our dear nation that these attacks were only the first drops of rain, so wait for what is coming up,” Ansar Beit al-Maqdis declared in its statement taking responsibility, according to a report by The Associated Press. The group warned Egyptians “to stay away from the police and security headquarters,” adding, “We try to avoid inflicting harm to the Muslims.”
Although commentators on state television and demonstrators at the scene immediately blamed the Brotherhood, the group said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the cowardly bombings in Cairo, expresses condolences to the families of those killed” and “demands swift investigations.” It blamed the “coup authorities” for deteriorating security, including the failure to apprehend the perpetrators of previous bombings.
Many who remembered marching to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25, 2011, described a feeling of depression on Saturday at the thought of the hallowed ground of their revolt now cheering a new military leader.
Security forces around the capital had been on high alert even before the bombings in anticipation of the anniversary on Saturday. The police had already cut off train access from southern Egypt, where support for the Islamists is strong. Each night this week security forces have set up heavily armed checkpoints around the city, although they apparently did little to stop the bombers.
“I have never had so many of my friends in jail, arrested only for expressing their own opinions,” said Rami Shaath, 42, a left-leaning activist and executive for a technology company preparing for a short-lived march from a mosque in Giza.
Egyptian television networks broadcast security camera footage of the scene leading up to the first attack: a handful of figures walking slowly away from a white pickup truck just minutes before it explodes.
The Islamist militants and the authoritarian state “feed off of each other,” he said, the militants crusading against the corruption of the state and the state using the fear of terrorism to justify limiting freedoms. “But people will return to their senses and refuse the oppression and, if we are alive, we are here for them,” he said.
“It felt like Judgment Day,” said Yahia, 26, who was sleeping at a friend’s home nearby and declined to give his full name for fear of reprisals.
By Saturday evening, the left-leaning April 6 group was circulating pictures of the body of one of its members it said had been shot by police.
“Yesterday, the whole area was barricaded by the police, and even the residents of the area could not get around,” he said. “If you wanted to take a taxi, they wouldn’t let it stop in front of the security headquarters. How did they get in?”
Hassam Badry, 53, an account manager, said he had come to attend the competing Brotherhood-organized antimilitary rally across the street, though he said he was not part of the group. “I voted last year for a constitution, before that for parliament, for a president, and now my vote is gone,” he said. “That is what I want back, my vote, not Morsi.”
The blast killed four policemen and injured more than 70 people, the government said in a statement. The explosion left a truck-size crater in the pavement so deep that it burst an underground water pipe. In addition to severely damaging several stories of the security building, the bomb damaged the facade and contents of the Museum of Islamic Art across the street and an adjacent national library as well.
The thousands who gathered in Tahrir Square on Saturday, however, appeared overjoyed at the prospect of a President Sisi. Banners, posters and T-shirts emblazoned with his face were everywhere. Some revelers wore Sisi face masks, while women ululated and chanted his name. Poster vendors sold a choice of two Sisi’s: one wearing a military uniform and dark sunglasses, the other smiling in a civilian suit, perhaps a nod to his next job.
Supporters of General Sisi began gathering almost immediately, waving Egyptian flags and holding signs depicting a profile of General Sisi in dark sunglasses against the profile of a lion, or, in other posters, of a hawk.
Military helicopters flew low overhead throughout the day, at least once dropping flags on the crowds below.
Half a block away, a police officer clutching an Egyptian flag climbed a barricade in front of the damaged security headquarters to address a small crowd and several television cameras. “We are here for you, we will sacrifice our souls for you, we are here for this,” he said, pointing to the flag and choking back tears. “They are martyrs, too,” he said, gesturing at his fellow officers.
The police, effectively forbidden from entering the square for more than a year after the 2011 uprising, were ubiquitous on Saturday, some in uniform and others in plain clothes. Armored vehicles and barbed wire guarded the entrances. Martial music boomed from loudspeakers along with the usual patriotic anthems.
Mohamed Ahmed, a banker, said he had come to show his support for the police. “Who else but the Muslim Brotherhood has an interest in this kind of attack?” he asked. “After they were forced out of politics, they just want to destroy the country.”
“We are celebrating the success of the army in fighting terrorism,” said Ali Hassan, 40, a tourist company employee. He was leaving the square, he said, to bring back his family, after he was sure it was safe from attack.
The interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, arrived at the scene of the first bombing around 9 a.m. in a heavily armed motorcade to inspect the damage. “They don’t want the people to celebrate,” he told reporters, according to state news media, in an apparent reference to the Brotherhood. He called on Egyptians to take to the streets on Saturday to demonstrate in support of the police, and said the attacks would not deter them “in their war against black terrorism.”
Two more attacks unfolded the same morning. In the Dokki neighborhood across the Nile in Giza, three men threw a bag of explosives at a security vehicle, killing a soldier and injuring 11 other security personnel, according to a statement from the public prosecutor. Another pro-Sisi crowd responded with the same chant for the “execution” of the Brotherhood members.
The third blast came from a primitive explosive device thrown at a police station in the Talbeya neighborhood of the Haram district in Giza; no one was hurt.
Then, in the late afternoon, a roadside bomb in the Haram district targeted a group of police vehicles returning from the clashes with Islamists protesting the military takeover. At least one bystander was killed in the explosion.
In addition to the six people killed by the bombs, at least eight more civilian protesters were killed in battles with the police, the Health Ministry said, bringing to 14 the total number who died Friday in violence.
Deadly attacks on soldiers and police officers have become commonplace since the military takeover, especially in the lawless Sinai. But Friday’s attack was at least the second car bombing inside Cairo, where the government and its supporters are strongest. In September, a smaller car bomb was detonated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the interior minister. In late December, a car bomb at a police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura killed at least 15 people and injured more than 100.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, whose name means “Supporters of Jerusalem,” has claimed responsibility for both the assassination attempt on the interior minister and the Mansoura bombing. In its video messages the group often criticizes the Brotherhood for its nonviolent politics, which failed to stop the military takeover. But the new Egyptian authorities treat Ansar Beit al-Maqdis as an extension of the Brotherhood, and in response they outlawed the Brotherhood.
