Egypt Soccer Disaster kills 74, People Blame Military Rule

Local Editor

Seventy-four people were killed when supporters clashed at an Egyptian soccer match, prompting fans and politicians on Thursday to turn on the ruling army for failing to prevent the deadliest incident since toppling former president Hosni Mubarak.

At least 1,000 people were injured in the violence on Wednesday when soccer fans invaded the pitch in the Mediterranean city of Port Said, after local team al-Masry beat visitors from Cairo, Al Ahli, Egypt's most successful club.

Angry politicians denounced the lack of security at the match and accused military leaders of allowing, or even causing, the fighting.
 
The city's streets were quiet at dawn, with few police or army officers in sight.

"The military council wants to prove that the country is heading towards chaos and destruction. They are Mubarak's men. They are applying his strategy when he said 'choose me or choose chaos'," said Mahmoud el-Naggar, 30, a laboratory technician and member of the Coalition of the Revolutionary Youth in Port Said.

"Down with military rule," thousands of Egyptians chanted at the main Cairo train station where they met injured fans returning from what one minister said was the scene of Egypt's worst soccer disaster.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state television building and marches across the capital were planned.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 76, who heads the ruling military council, took an unusual step of speaking by telephone to a television channel.

"I deeply regret what happened at the football match in Port Said. I offer my
condolences to the victims' families," Tantawi said in comments broadcast on state television.

"The people want the execution of the field marshal," fans chanted at the station. "We will secure their rights, or die like them," they said as covered bodies were unloaded from the trains.

Parliament will hold an emergency session later on Thursday to discuss the violence.

Several enraged politicians and ordinary Egyptians accused officials who are still in their jobs after the fall of Mubarak of complicity in the tragedy, or at least of allowing a security vacuum that has let violence flourish in the past 12 months.

Others blamed "thugs," the hired hands or plain clothes police officers in Mubarak's era who would often emerge from police lines to crush dissent to his rule.

"Unknown groups came between the fans and they were the ones that started the
 chaos. I was at the match and I saw that the group that did this is not from Port Said," said Farouk Ibrahim.

"They were thugs, like the thugs the National Democratic Party used in elections," he said, referring to Mubarak's former party and the polls that were routinely rigged in its favor.

Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said 47 people were arrested. Egypt's football federation said it was indefinitely delaying matches for the Egyptian premier league.


Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org