CAIRO // At least 29 people were killed in clashes in Egypt on Saturday as rival demonstrations were held on the third anniversary of the revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Thousands of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square chanted slogans backing the military chief, General Abdel Fattah El Sisi, as Islamists and anti-military activists elsewhere clashed with police.
The divisions underscored the bitter polarisation since the 2011 revolt, in which Egyptians of all political stripes united to demand the end of Mr Mubarak’s three-decade rule.
Egypt’s health ministry reported 29 people killed nationwide when police and supporters of the military-backed government clashed with Islamist supporters of the former president Mohammed Morsi, who was deposed in July after a turbulent year in power.
Egypt was already on edge after four bombs exploded in Cairo on Friday, including a massive blast outside the police headquarters. The attacks, which were claimed by a Sinai-based extremist group, killed six people.
Hours before Saturday’s rallies, a small bomb outside a police training centre in north Cairo wounded one person, the health ministry said.
A car bombing at a police base in the canal city of Suez wounded at least nine people.
An Al Qaeda-inspired group – Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, or Partisans of Jerusalem – claimed responsibility for Friday’s bombings, all of them targeting police, and urged ordinary Egyptian “Muslims” to stay away from police buildings.
The Al Qaeda leader, Ayman Al Zawahri, issued a call to Egypt’s Muslims not to fight their Christian compatriots, and instead focus their efforts on opposing the military-backed authorities.
Egypt’s Christians largely supported the removal of Mr Morsi and were subsequently targeted by a wave of violence.
In an audio message posted on militant websites, Al Zawahri said it was not in the interest of Muslims to be engaged with the Christians because “we have to be busy confronting the Americanised coup of El Sisi and establish an Islamic government instead”.
He also lashed out at Mr Morsi, saying he had cooperated with secular Egyptians and surrendered to the Americans by acknowledging agreements with them and Israel, and that this was the reason for his downfall.
Supporters of Mr Morsi in Cairo on Saturday launched small counter-demonstrations to the commemorations called by the authorities, which were concentrated in Tahrir, the centre of the 2011 revolt.
Police were deployed across the capital and fired tear gas and birdshot to disperse one protest outside a mosque.
Twenty-six of the deaths on Saturday were in street clashes in Cairo and its suburbs, the health ministry said, and two in the province of Minya to the south. There were 15 deaths nationwide in similar clashes on Friday.
One of the dead in Cairo was a member of the April 6 movement, which spearheaded the uprising against Mr Mubarak and had also opposed Mr Morsi, a member of the group said.
In the restive Sinai Peninsula, meanwhile, five Egyptian soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash, doctors said.
The military said it was investigating the cause of the crash in a region that has seen escalating militant attacks targeting the military and security forces.
* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting by Associated Press
