Cape Town — Dozens of supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi are reported killed and hundreds arrested after security forces moved Wednesday to end a weeks-long standoff and cleared two protest camps in Cairo.
As further protests spread across Cairo and other parts of the country, the movement of trains was stopped, and in one city demonstrators besieged a regional government headquarters.
Aswat Masriya reported Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood as saying 50 demonstrators were killed when the new government's forces cleared their protest camps at the Rabaa al-Adaweya and Nahda Squares. News agencies later reported a Brotherhood claim that 120 had died.
The government said one police officer and one conscript were killed and nine others were injured.
Mursi supporters have been conducting a sit-in at the two camps in Cairo in a bid to have Mursi restored. Intensive negotiations, which have included diplomatic interventions by the United States, failed to break a deadlock between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military-backed government which seized power from Mursi.
It was also reported that government forces had arrested 200 people at the camps for possessing firearms and other weapons.
"Fifty of those arrested at the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in were possessing weaponry and gas cylinders, according to the security sources," Aswat Masriya reported. "The security forces also arrested 150 people from the Giza's Nahda Square sit-in, all of whom belong to the Muslim Brotherhood and possessed weapons."
Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam al-Erian said the government assault at Rabaa al-Adawiya targeted all entrances to the camp without leaving an exit for protesters to exit the sit-in.
He was quoted as saying: "The teargas fired by the security forces is suffocating everyone, black smoke is filling the area... Hundreds of martyrs are falling down but our willpower stands strong and won't be broken, so that we live freely in a free nation."
The suspension of the national rail service was reported to have been revealed by a source at the Egyptian Railway Authority.
Mursi supporters took to the streets and rallied to protest at mosques in response to the breaking up of the sit-ins, Aswat Masriya reported.
And hundreds of protesters hurled stones at Aswan's governorate headquarters on Wednesday.
"Around three thousand demonstrators have besieged the building and are attempting to break into it," Aswat Masriya reported.
In other parts of Cairo, protesters blocked roads, set fire to car tyres and stoned cars, while police fired teargas at pro-Mursi supporters who tried to rally against the government's crackdown.
