Egyptian Protesters Clash with Police, 2 US Women Kidnapped in Sinai

Local Editor

Egyptian Protesters laid siege to Egypt's interior ministry on Friday, pushing their
 protest against the military-led government into a second day in a show of anger triggered by the deaths of 74 people in the country's worst soccer disaster.

One person died in Cairo from a shotgun pellet wound and two were killed in the city of Suez as police used live rounds to hold back crowds trying to break into a police station, witnesses and the ambulance authority said.

Egyptian activists called for mass protests across the country on Friday to demand the ouster of the ruling military council, target of raging anger over the soccer deaths.

Demonstrators were set to stage marches from mosques across Cairo after noon prayers towards parliament, 28 pro-democracy groups said in a statement on the Internet.

Friday's protests come after more than 600 were injured when thousands protested in Cairo on Thursday.

Protesters clashed with police as they tried to reach the interior ministry, which they say is responsible for the football violence.

Elsewhere two American women were kidnapped by gunmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in an apparent attempt to hold them for ransom, and a further example of the growing lawlessness in the country.

It is believed the two American women kidnapped in the Sinai Peninsula were on vacation.

Security in the isolated desert region has deteriorated since the overthrow of Dictator Hosni Mubarak last February.

The two American women have not been named, but it is understood they were among a party of five traveling from Saint Catherine's monastery in central Sinai to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Their small bus was stopped by a vehicle carrying men armed with machine guns who abducted the women.

State television said a military airplane had been deployed over south Sinai, as a search operation begins.

The incident comes just days after Bedouins in north Sinai briefly seized 25 Chinese workers employed by a military owned cement factory.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org