The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Thursday vowed to bring down the “military coup” that toppled former President Mohammed Mursi and said it remained committed to peaceful activism after a deadly crackdown to disperse sit-ins by protesters calling for the re-installment of the Islamist leader.
“We will always be non-violent and peaceful. We remain strong, defiant and resolved,” Agence France-Presse quoted the Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad al-Haddad as saying on his Twitter feed.
He added: “We will push [forward] until we bring down this military coup.”
The Muslim Brotherhood called for a march in Cairo on Thursday. The Islamist movement said the planned march would set off from the al-Iman mosque in the capital “to protest the death of their relatives,” AFP reported.
At least 525 people were killed in Egypt on Wednesday, including 202 protesters in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Cairo, a health ministry official told AFP.
The senior health ministry official Khaled al-Khatib told AFP that 43 policemen had also been killed.
Meanwhile on Thursday, security forces struggled to deter insecurity in Egypt after the military-installed government declared a month-long state of emergency.
The authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Cairo and 10 other provinces, bringing back the army’s powers of arrest and indefinite detention it held for decades until the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in a 2011 popular uprising.
Police and troops used bulldozers, teargas and live fire on Wednesday to clear out two Cairo sit-ins: al-Nahda and Rabaa al-Adawiya, that had become a hub of Muslim Brotherhood resistance to the military after it deposed Mursi on July 3.
Meanwhile, Islamists staged revenge attacks on Christian targets in several areas, torching churches, homes and business after Coptic Pope Tawadros gave his blessing to the military takeover that ousted Mursi, security sources and state media said.
(With AFP, Reuters and Associated Press)
Also Read
-
Brent oil prices climb as Egypt unrest stokes supply fears
Brent crude prices climbed towards $111 per barrel on Thursday, extending gains from the previous session on a drop in U.S. oil inventories and ... Energy -
Egypt seethes under curfew after hundreds killed
Security forces struggled to clamp a lid on Egypt on Thursday after hundreds of people were killed when authorities forcibly broke up camps of ... Middle East -
U.S. drops the ball on Egypt
As Egypt stares into the abyss with at least 278 killed and hundreds injured yesterday, the U.S. diplomatic muddle and its fading influence has been ... Middle East -
Misinformation about Egypt’s ‘massacre’
No one really knows how many pro-Mursi protestors were killed on Wednesday – the government says about 270, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has been ... Middle East -
U.S. weighs canceling military exercise with Egypt
The United States is considering calling off a major military exercise with Egypt after Egyptian security forces killed scores of protesters on ... Middle East
