Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, including some riding horses and camels and wielding whips, march towards anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo. (AP Photo)
CAIRO — At least three people were killed Wednesday and hundreds more wounded on a day of bloodshed in Cairo that saw violent clashes between supporters and protesters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s crumbling regime.
Amid occasional sounds of ambulance sirens and gun shots and sights of firebombs flying overhead, demonstrators remained in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square into the evening despite the government-imposed curfew and a call from Vice President Omar Suleiman urging everyone to go home.
Suleiman, the veteran intelligence chief appointed to the office of vice president last week, emphasized that the protests must end before talks with the opposition can start.
“Those taking part in these protests have delivered their message,” he told state media, according to AFP, though opposition leaders have insisted there can be no negotiated transition until Mubarak, in office since 1981, steps down.
The embattled president announced late Tuesday that he planned to hold on to power until the next election in September, at which point he would resign.
In a surprising turn on Wednesday, thousands of his supporters stormed Tahrir Square, some on horses and camels wielding whips and chains.
Shocked protesters — outnumbered by the pro-regime demonstrators — dragged riders off their horses and at least one was severely beaten.
Egypt’s minister of health said three were killed, including one who died when he fell off a bridge, and at least 639 were injured in Wednesday’s violence. A doctor at the scene, however, estimated the number of wounded to be closer to 1,500, Reuters reported.
A nurse at a makeshift hospital set up at a mosque near Tahrir Square described a scene of “absolute mayhem” as protesters flooded into the clinic with gashes and broken bones.
“It looks like an abattoir in here,” she told AFP. “There’s blood everywhere.”
Throughout the day images showed the two opposing crowds hurling missiles at each other and swinging metal bars during running street battles. Gunshots were heard in Tahrir Square and AFP reported that soldiers were firing warning shots for the first time, though the military denied those claims in an announcement on state television.
Sky News showed a tank pumping out smoke in a bid to disperse protesters and tear gas was fired at people protesting the regime near Tahrir Square, although it was unclear who was responsible for spraying the gas. Earlier in the day, Mubarak supporters were allegedly dropping concrete blocks from high buildings onto the opposition demonstrators, according to AFP.
Elsewhere, Molotov cocktails landed inside the grounds of Cairo’s world-famous Egyptian Museum with soldiers using hoses to douse the flames, AFP said. A hail of petrol bombs also rained down on the area, setting fire to a tree opposite the museum, which is home to a priceless collection of antiquities and had thus far avoided major damage and looting.
Egyptian state-controlled television said members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist opposition movement, were responsible for most of the violence in Tahrir Square — accusations the Muslim Brotherhood denied, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, anti-regime protesters showed news cameras police ID cards allegedly taken from plain-clothes Mubarak supporters as proof that the president had sent government agents to the streets to stage the disorder, Al Jazeera reported. The interior ministry denied orchestrating the day’s violence in an announcement on state television.
Former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk feared “a bloodbath could follow” if Mubarak’s regime had staged the clash as a ploy to justify a new crackdown, he told Al Jazeera in an interview.
US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley acknowledged that though supporters of the government have been blamed for the violence, “we don’t know who unleashed these thugs on the streets of Cairo.”
“This was clearly an attempt at intimidating the protesters who have been … insisting on change,” he said, adding that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “emphasized again our condemnation of the violence that occurred today and encouraged the government to hold those responsible fully accountable for this violence” in her phone call to Vice President Suleiman.
As the United States repeated its call for restraint, reports of violence against journalists brought a stern response from the Obama administration.
“We are concerned about detentions and attacks on news media in Egypt,” P.J. Crowley wrote in a Twitter message. “The civil society that Egypt wants to build includes a free press.”
Ben Wedeman of CNN reported via Twitter that Al Arabiya news anchor Ahmed Abdullah was found in a hospital after allegedly being captured and “severely beaten” by pro-Mubarak supporters.
Two prominent American news correspondents, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, also said they were attacked by demonstrators.
