Egyptians raise Islam flag at US Embassy

Thousands of Egyptian demonstrators tore down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo yesterday and replaced it with an Islamic flag on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US, an AFP photographer reported.

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, mostly hardline Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement or football fans, gathered at the embassy in protest over a film deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammed that was produced by expatriate members of Egypt’s Christian minority resident in the US.

A dozen men scaled the embassy walls and one tore down the US flag, replacing it with a black one inscribed with the Muslim profession of faith: “There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” Demonstrators also daubed part of that slogan – “There is no God but God” – on the walls of the compound.

Asked whether the flag the protesters hoisted on the anniversary of nearly 3,000 people being killed in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania was that of the Al-Qaeda movement, a US State Department official said she thought not.

Egyptian police intervened without resort to force and persuaded the trespassers to come down.

The crowd then largely dispersed leaving just a few hundred protesters outside the US mission, another AFP correspondent reported.