Egypt "descends into anarchy"

[cali]

Blood and Chaos Prevail in Egypt, Testing Control

Egypt erupted into violent chaos on Friday, raising doubts about the new authorities’ capacity to maintain order, as Islamists and other opponents of last month’s military takeover fought security forces and their civilian allies in street battles across the capital and other cities.

The country seemed to descend into anarchy. Terrified protesters caught in a cross-fire jumped or fell from an overpass in a panicked effort to escape. A gunfight erupted on the doorstep of a Four Seasons hotel. Men wielding guns and machetes — some backing the Islamists, others police supporters in civilian clothes, others simply criminals — roamed the streets of the capital and other cities, and it was often impossible to tell friend from foe.

News reports put the civilian death toll for Friday at well over 100, which would bring the total since Wednesday to nearly 750. Health Ministry officials said Friday’s civilian toll was 27, but late Friday afternoon more than 30 uncounted corpses were seen at a field hospital in a mosque near the center of the fighting, in Cairo’s Ramses Square.

Defying a 7 p.m. curfew, antagonists battled there into the night, lit by an unchecked fire that consumed a nearby office building. The military-appointed government issued a statement declaring that the military, the police and the people were “standing together in the face of the treacherous terrorist scheme against Egypt of the Brotherhood organization.” But the extent of the mayhem cast doubt on its ability to deliver on its central promise of restoring order and security.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/world/middleeast/egypt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It was a disgrace, a most shameful chapter in Egyptian history. The police – some wearing black hoods – shot down into the crowds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters from the roof of Cairo’s Ramses Street police station and surrounding streets.

They even fired at traffic on the airport highway. And to see their terrible work, you had only to climb the pink marble steps of the Al-Fath Mosque – sticky with fresh blood yesterday evening – and see the acre of wounded lying on deep-woven carpets and, in a remote corner, 25 shrouded corpses. Dr Ibrahim Yamani gently lifted the bandages from their bodies: shot in the face, shot in the head, shot in the chest.

So now we have the Ramses Square Massacre – these bloodbaths seem to come by the week, if not by the day – and even as I left the mosque last night, where praying Muslims knelt beside the moaning wounded, a team of paramedics pounded on the chest of a terribly wounded young man. “We are going to lose him,” one of the other doctors said. So was it now 26 dead? The paramedics talked of exploding bullets, and certainly one man’s head had been half blown away. His face was unrecognisable.

The flies were already gathering, swatted from one corpse by a man in tears who was kneeling on the ground. When they could, the medical staff wrote the names of the dead in crayon on their naked bodies. “Zeid Bilal Mohamed” was scrawled on one chest. The dead still deserve names. The last corpse to be brought into the mosque was that of Ahmed Abdul Aziz Hafez. There were – I couldn’t count after the first 50, but the doctors insisted on the figure – 250 wounded.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-police-keep-firing-the-bodies-pile-up-in-cairo-bloodbaths-are-now-a-daily-occurrence-8771529.html

[kelliekat44]

1. This is what happens when evil is bolstered by good intentions and ignorance. nt

[cali]

2. what?

what evil is bolstered by good intentions and ignorance?