CAIRO: Egypt’s Republican Guard restored order around the presidential palace yesterday after fierce overnight clashes killed seven people, but passions ran high in a struggle over the country’s future.
The Islamist president, Muhammad Mursi, criticized by his opponents for his silence in the last few days, was due to address the nation later in the day, state television said.
Hundreds of his supporters who had camped out near the palace overnight withdrew before a mid-afternoon deadline set by the Republican Guard. Dozens of Mursi’s foes remained, but were kept away by a barbed wire barricade guarded by tanks.
The military played a big role in removing President Hosni Mubarak during last year’s popular revolt, taking over to manage a transitional period, but had stayed out of the latest crisis.
Mursi’s Islamist partisans fought opposition protesters well into the early hours during duelling demonstrations over the president’s decree on Nov. 22 to expand his powers to help him push through a mostly Islamist-drafted constitution.
Officials said seven people had been killed and 350 wounded in the violence, for which each side blamed the other. Six of the dead were Mursi supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood said.
The street clashes reflected a deep political divide in the most populous Arab nation, where contrasting visions of Islamists and their liberal rivals have complicated a struggle to embed democracy after Mubarak’s 30-year autocracy.
The United States, worried about the stability of an Arab partner which has a peace deal with Israel and which receives $1.3 billion a year in US military aid, has urged dialogue.
The commander of the Republican Guard said deployment of tanks and troop carriers around the presidential palace was intended to separate the adversaries, not to repress them.
“The armed forces, and at the forefront of them the Republican Guard, will not be used as a tool to oppress the demonstrators,” General Mohamed Zaki told the state news agency.
Hussein Abdel Ghani, spokesman of the opposition National Salvation Front, said more protests were planned, but not necessarily at the palace in Cairo’s Heliopolis district.
“Our youth are leading us today and we decided to agree to whatever they want to do,” he told Reuters.
Egypt plunged into renewed turmoil after Mursi issued his Nov. 22 decree and an Islamist-dominated assembly hastily approved a new constitution to go to a referendum on Dec. 15.
The Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, to which Mursi belonged before he was narrowly elected president in June, appealed for unity. Divisions among Egyptians “only serve the nation’s enemies,” Mohamed Badie said in a statement.
Rival factions used rocks, petrol bombs and guns in the clashes around the presidential palace.
“We came here to support President Mursi and his decisions. He is the elected president of Egypt,” said demonstrator Emad Abou Salem, 40. “He has legitimacy and nobody else does.”
Opposition protester Ehab Nasser el-Din, 21, his head bandaged after being hit by a rock the day before, decried the Muslim Brotherhood’s “grip on the country,” which he said would only tighten if the new constitution is passed. Another protester, Ahmed Abdel-Hakim, 23, accused the Brotherhood of “igniting the country in the name of religion.”
Mursi’s opponents accuse him of seeking to create a new “dictatorship.” The president says his actions were necessary to prevent courts still full of judges appointed by Mubarak from derailing a constitution vital for Egypt’s political transition.
Mursi has shown no sign of buckling under pressure from protesters, confident that the Islamists, who have dominated both elections since Mubarak was overthrown, can win the referendum and the parliamentary election to follow.
Mahmoud Hussein, the Brotherhood’s secretary-general, said holding the plebiscite was the only way out of the crisis, dismissing the opposition as “remnants of the (Mubarak) regime, thugs and people working for foreign agendas.”
As well as relying on his Brotherhood power base, Mursi may also tap into a popular yearning for stability and economic revival after almost two years of political turmoil.
The Egyptian pound sank on Thursday to its lowest level in eight years, after previously firming on hopes that a $4.8 billion IMF loan would stabilize the economy. The Egyptian stock market fell 4.4 percent after it opened.
Foreign exchange reserves fell by nearly $450 million to $15 billion in November, indicating that the Central Bank was still spending heavily to bolster the pound. The reserves stood at about $36 billion before the anti-Mubarak uprising.
Egypt Army restores order after clashes
Egypt Army restores order after clashes
UN report says Ugandan troops helped South Sudan with deadly airstrikes
- Ugandan troops are deployed in South Sudan to help the government of President Salva Kiir against forces loyal to opposition figure Riek Machar
- The attacks cited in the UN report involved widespread use of “improvised incendiary devices,” it said
NAIROBI: Uganda helped South Sudan carry out airstrikes that killed and badly burned civilians a year ago, according to a UN inquiry.
Joint aerial bombardments by South Sudan and Uganda “targeted civilian-populated areas predominantly affecting Nuer communities in opposition-affiliated areas,” said the report by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, referring to South Sudan’s second-largest ethnic group.
Ugandan troops are deployed in South Sudan to help the government of President Salva Kiir against forces loyal to opposition figure Riek Machar, who was suspended as vice president in September after he faced criminal charges. Ugandan military authorities say troops are in South Sudan at the invitation of the South Sudan government and in accordance with a bilateral security agreement.
While Machar is currently on trial for offenses including treason, fighting has intensified in areas seen as his strongholds, where government troops are trying to disperse the rebels.
The attacks cited in the UN report involved widespread use of “improvised incendiary devices,” it said.
Ugandan forces entered South Sudan in March 2025 with military hardware, including tanks and armored vehicles. That happened shortly after a militia overran a military garrison near the Ethiopian border.
Weeks later, Machar was placed under house arrest for his alleged role in orchestrating the attack, charges that he denies. The government has since relied on aerial attacks to gain the upper hand in a widening conflict with Machar’s forces and other armed groups.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni sent his army to intervene in South Sudan’s 2013-2018 civil war on multiple occasions on behalf of Kiir’s forces, helping to turn the tide in his favor. Ongoing fighting threatens a 2018 peace deal.
During one attack in March 2025 in Wunaliet, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the capital of Juba, homes were engulfed after planes dropped “barrels of liquid that ignited,” witnesses told the UN commission. Survivors said they saw “civilians set alight, including a boy burnt beyond recognition.” A barracks, housing opposition soldiers, was also struck.
A day after the attack, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Museveni’s son who also serves as the top military commander, posted on X that Uganda had bombed opposition forces.
“Our air offensive will not stop until Riek Machar makes peace with my uncle Afande Salva,” he wrote. While Kiir is not actually Kainerugaba’s uncle, the term shows the closeness of the two governments.
The post, which was later deleted, accompanied a video appearing to show fiery explosions captured from an in-flight aircraft.
Flight tracking data shows that a turboprop plane that circled the area during the bombing had arrived earlier that day from Uganda and was operated by the Ugandan army, the UN report said.
The report does not state conclusively how many operations Uganda was involved in or the exact nature of their involvement, only that there appeared to be “high degrees of planning, operational integration and command-level authorization.”
In November, Uganda denied participating in any combat operations in South Sudan. It has also denied using “chemical weapons and barrel bombs” and said it does not attack civilians.
Last year, Amnesty International said that Uganda had violated a 2018 UN arms embargo that prohibits member states from providing most forms of military assistance to South Sudan, including weapons and personnel. An UN panel of experts echoed that assessment in November.
