Egypt’s ruling military council yesterday tasked former Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzuri with forming a new Cabinet, private Egyptian TV channels reported.

Mr Ganzuri headed the government from 1996 to 1999, under ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The reports of his appointment came after the ruling military council on Tuesday accepted the resignation of caretaker Premier Essam Sharaf’s Cabinet, amid spiralling unrest, and invited the country’s political forces for crisis talks on the formation of a “national salvation” government.

After the popular uprisings earlier this year that toppled Mr Mubarak, Mr Ganzuri distanced himself from the former leader in a television interview, prompting several Facebook pages to recommend him as a future presidential candidate.

Born in 1933, Mr Ganzuri served as minister of planning and international cooperation before his first tenure as Egyptian Premier.

He then made a name for himself by working to strengthen ties between Egypt and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Female journalists covering unrest ‘sexually assaulted’

Two female foreign journalists yesterday described harrowing sexual assaults carried out by crowds or police as they tried to cover demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy said she was sexually assaulted by police during hours under detention after taking part in protests on the sprawling square that has become a landmark of the Arab Spring.

“Besides beating me, the dogs of (central security forces) subjected me to the worst sexual assault ever,” Ms Eltahawy said on her Twitter account.

“Five or six surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers,” she said.

“My left arm and right hand are broken (according) to X-rays,” Ms Elthawy added said, posting pictures of herself in casts.

Earlier Ms Eltahawy, an award-winning journalist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues based in New York, tweeted that she had been released after having been beaten and arrested in the interior ministry building.

Later, a French journalist working for public television channel France 3, said she had been violently beaten and sexually assaulted while covering the protests.

Caroline Sinz told AFP that she and her cameraman, Salah Agrabi, had been confronted in a road leading from Tahrir to the interior ministry, the scene of days of deadly clashes between police and protesters demanding democratic change.

“We were filming in Mohammed Mahmud street when we were mobbed by young people who were about 14 or 15,” said Ms Sinz.

The journalist and her cameraman were then dragged by a group of men towards Tahrir Square where they became separated, she said.

“We were then assaulted by a crowd of men. I was beaten by a group of youngsters and adults who tore my clothes” and then molested her in a way that “would be considered rape,” she said.

“Some people tried to help me but failed. I was lynched. It lasted three quarters of an hour before I was taken out. I thought I was going to die,” she said. Her cameraman was also beaten.

Ms Sinz was finally rescued by a group of Egyptians and returned to her hotel, where she was assisted by the French embassy before being seen by a doctor.

Media activists from Reporters Without Borders decried working conditions for journalists cov-ering the fresh unrest and upcoming elections in Egypt.

“The chaos prevailing in Cairo and the resulting grave human rights violations are as bad as in the darkest hours of the revolution’s earlier phase, in January and February,” the media rights group said in a statement.