Egyptian security forces clashed for a fourth straight day yesterday with protesters demanding an end to military rule as the death toll rose to 12, despite strong international criticism of the use of force.
Two people were killed in dawn fighting in Cairo’s administrative heart as security forces swooped to remove the protesters, health ministry sources said.
The clashes quickly subsided before several hundred people turned out in Tahrir Square – the epicentre of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak – for the funeral of a protester killed in the violence.
But the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that took power in February denied it had given orders to use force against protesters and said a plot had been uncovered to burn down Parliament.
SCAF member General Adel Emara, interrupting a live news conference, said he had “received a call now to say that a plot was uncovered today to burn Parliament and there are now large crowds in Tahrir Square ready to implement the plan.”
AFP reporters in Tahrir said there were no signs of tension there or on the square’s outskirts, where a historic building containing national archives was destroyed and protesters were trying to save any surviving documents.
Gen. Emara said the army “does not use force against protesters” but qualified those in Tahrir as “people seeking to destroy the state... not the honourable people of the January 25 revolution.”
But Gen. Emara did admit that troops had beaten a veiled woman after having ripped her clothes to reveal her bra, sparking nationwide outrage.
In the picture and YouTube footage of the incident, the woman is sprawled on the ground, helmeted troops towering over her.
One is seen kicking her, and later she appears unconscious, her stomach bared and her bra showing. “Yes, this happened. But you have to look at the circumstances around (the incident),” Gen. Emara told reporters.
“We are investigating it, we have nothing to hide,” he said.
The comments came as rights groups and dissidents slammed retired army general Abdelmoneim Kato – an advisor to the military – for saying that some in Tahrir were “street kids who deserve to be thrown into Hitler’s incinerators.”
Presidential hopeful and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said such statements showed “a deranged and criminal state of mind.”
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information denounced Kato’s comments, saying they “incite hatred and justify violence against citizens.”
Footage on social media networks of military police beating protesters, sometimes leaving them motionless on the ground, has caused nationwide outrage.