In defiance of calls for restraint, Egypt’s Interior Ministry warned protesters that police officers were authorized to use lethal force to protect themselves. The ministry also promised to punish any “terrorist actions and sabotage” after at least two government buildings were burned early Thursday.
“The ministry has given instructions to all forces to use live ammunition in the face of any attacks on establishments or forces within the framework of the regulations of using the legitimate right of self-defense,” the ministry said in a statement. “All the forces assigned to securing and protecting these establishments were provided with the weapons and the ammunition necessary to deter any attack that may target them.”
The scorched-earth assault by security forces on Wednesday, which razed two protest camps in Cairo set up by backers of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, was far more ferocious and extensive than the gradual pressure promised by the interim government that replaced him.
It was the easily the most violent of the three deadly suppressions that have roiled Egypt since Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, was forcibly removed from power by the armed forces six weeks ago, plunging the country into its worst crisis since the ouster of Mr. Morsi’s authoritarian predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, in the 2011 revolution.
Despite the growing tally of dead, Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Mr. Morsi exhorted followers to take to the streets on Thursday and Friday, defying the newly imposed state of emergency and reflecting a backlash against the military-appointed successors to Mr. Morsi’s administration, who appear determined to crush the Islamists as a political force.
Hundreds of Mr. Morsi’s supporters marched through Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, clashing with the police. In Giza, across the Nile from Cairo near the pyramids, Islamists attacked provincial headquarters with Molotov cocktails and set it on fire. Islamists also blocked the main highway encircling Cairo.
The landmark Al-Eman Mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City, which had been converted into a makeshift morgue where more than 200 bodies were putrefying under melting ice, was raided late in the day by police forces who fired tear gas at mourners trying to find relatives, Islamist activists reported. The Freedom and Justice Party, the political party of Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, said in a statement that the police had demanded that mourners inside “get out of the mosque one by one and to surrender.”
Ahram Online, the Web site of Egypt’s official newspaper, said as many as 30 churches across a wide swathe of the country were “completely devastated” in reprisal attacks by furious Islamists who vented their rage over the mass killings at Egypt’s Christian minority.
In his first response to the mass killings, Mr. Obama strongly condemned the Egyptian government’s use of brute force to crush the protests and said the United States had canceled military exercises with the Egypt’s armed forces scheduled for next month. Mr. Obama also warned of further unspecified steps if Egypt’s interim leaders continued down what he called a “more dangerous path.”
But he said nothing about cutting the $1.3 billion in annual military aid that the United States provides to Egypt and acknowledged that the United States had historically regarded the country as a friend and a “cornerstone for peace in the Middle East.”
In Europe, some officials called for a suspension of aid by the European Union, and at least one member state, Denmark, cut off funds. France’s president summoned the Egyptian ambassador to condemn the violence.
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