Troops open fire as Morsi supporters take to the streets

Islamist supporters of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s ousted president, held enormous demonstrations in Cairo on Friday, and thousands of them angrily confronted security forces guarding the compound where he was believed to be held. Witnesses said at least five demonstrators were killed by gunfire. Many others were wounded in the confrontation, but the precise casualty toll was unclear. Reporters heard multiple volleys of gunshots and saw blood on the streets and demonstrators nursing what appeared to be birdshot wounds. Large numbers of soldiers, rifles at the ready, were perched behind sandbagged barricades in front of the Republican Guard barracks, ringed by barbed wire and believed to be housing Morsi. The smell of tear gas hung in the air. “Where’s Morsi? Where’s Morsi?” angry demonstrators screamed, shaking their shoes in disrespect at military helicopters circling them. Many of the Morsi loyalists spoke of martyrdom and said they would not leave the streets until their leader was freed and restored to office, raising the possibility of further violence and a prolonged standoff. “Everyone here is ready to die,” said a demonstrator who identified himself as Mohamed Ismael, a 41-year-old veterinarian. Video uploaded on YouTube showed what appeared to be one dead protester on the street. Al Jazeera television reported that the army had denied its soldiers opened fire on protesters and had said the soldiers were armed only with blank cartridges and tear gas. The demonstrations were organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to express their outrage over the ouster and arrest of Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first freely elected president. He was in power for only a year. Since he was forced out by military commanders Wednesday evening, security forces have arrested dozens of senior Muslim Brotherhood members and shut down its television stations in a widening crackdown. An interim president installed by the military, the former chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, took a further step on Friday to disempower the vestiges of Morsi’s government by formally dissolving the Shura Council, the country’s only operating house of Parliament, which had been dominated by the Islamists. The constitutional court had disbanded the lower house last year, one of many challenges Morsi had faced in his troubled tenure. Egypt’s military commanders have justified the ouster of Morsi by saying they felt compelled to bring the country back together after millions of Egyptians demonstrated against him, claiming he had arrogated power, neglected the economy and worsened divisions in society. Early on Friday, in a sign of the potential resistance to the new order, armed Islamists struck at four security force positions in the restive Sinai Peninsula, killing one soldier and wounding two in a rocket attack on a police post in Rafah on the border with Gaza Strip, according to news reports that quoted security officials. Separate rocket attacks were said to have been aimed at military checkpoints at El Arish airport in Sinai. The Associated Press quoted an Egyptian official as saying the border crossing to the Gaza Strip had been closed indefinitely. In an apparent show of force, military jets howled over the capital, Cairo, for a second day on Friday, leaving streams of smoke in the red, white and black colors of the national flag. New York Times