The killing of hundreds of Egyptian demonstrators at two protest camps last year was systematic, ordered by top officials and probably amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said yesterday, calling for a UN inquiry.

In a 188-page report based on a year-long investigation, the New York-based group urged the UN to look into six incidents involving killings by security forces of supporters of elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who was overthrown by the army on July 3, 2013, following several days of protests.

In its first response to the report, Egypt’s government said it was “characterised by negativity and bias” and relied on anonymous witnesses rather than neutral sources.

Hundreds of supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have been killed and thousands arrested since he was ousted. The largest number of deaths came during the storming of two protest camps by security forces on August 14, 2013.

The report said at least 817 protesters were killed during the clearing of the Brotherhood sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya.

It compared the attack to the 1989 massacre of protesters around China’s Tiananmen Square.

“In Rabaa Square, Egyptian security forces carried out one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a statement marking the release of the report.

“This wasn’t merely a case of excessive force or poor training. It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. Many of the same officials are still in power in Egypt, and have a lot to answer for.”

Egyptian officials, who call the Brotherhood a terrorist group, have repeatedly said that some protesters were armed and fired at police and soldiers. The Interior Ministry said 62 security officers died in violence across Egypt on August 14.

About 275 police have been killed over the past year, it said.

Before the dispersals, officials – including then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is now President – had called for the sit-ins to be cleared, citing concern over traffic, public disturbances and possible violence.

HRW acknowledged that protesters threw rocks and petrol bombs at security forces and a few opened fire. That failed to justify the level of force deployed by the state, it said.

“Given the widespread and systematic nature of these killings, and the evidence suggesting that they were part of a policy to use lethal force against largely unarmed protesters on political grounds, these killings most likely amount to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

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