World
Nearly 50 killed as Egypt marks revolt anniversary
Nearly 50 people died in weekend clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt's military, as media outlets on Sunday hailed rallies urging the army chief to run for the presidency.Afp
Three years after Egyptians rose up to demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, thousands of demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday chanted slogans backing another military man, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as police clashed with Islamists and activists elsewhere.
The health ministry said 49 people were killed when security forces moved to disperse protests across the country by supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and activists who spearheaded the 2011 uprising.
The police arrested 1,079 "rioters," said the interior ministry.
Morsi was ousted by the military in July following mass protests calling on him to step down.
Since then, his supporters have been staging near-daily protests calling for his reinstatement, despite a crackdown that has killed more than 1,000 people and imprisoned thousands.
Widening their crackdown, authorities have also targeted secular activists, detaining some figures of the 2011 uprising for organising or taking part in unlicensed protests, after a disputed law adopted in November banned all but police-sanctioned rallies.
And in a drastic escalation, they also blacklisted Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement as a terrorist group in December after a suicide bombing killed 15 people in a police headquarters north of Cairo.
The attack was condemned by the Brotherhood and claimed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant group based in the restive Sinai Peninsula that has claimed most of the major attacks targeting security forces in the country.
Militant attacks have killed scores of Egyptian soldiers and policemen since Morsi's ouster, especially in the Sinai.
On Sunday, armed assailants opened fire on a military bus in the North Sinai, killing four soldiers near a military checkpoint that was targeted by a rocket in the restive region.