MANSOURA, Egypt: On the fourth day of ongoing demonstrations in Mansoura upwards of 1000 participants turned out for a gathering that many are calling the city's most significant level of unrest since the revolution. Though several hundred Mansourans participated in demonstrations orchestrated on a national level this past Friday – directed against the military council's controversial supra-constitutional principles document ¬– the origin of the current unrest can best be traced to this past Saturday, when news reports of killed and injured demonstrators poured in from Tahrir Square. It was then that a small group of students from Mansoura's April 6 Movement gathered at the city's main administrative building to call for a march in solidarity with Tahrir. “There was just five of us, so we began calling everyone we knew to join us,” a member of April 6 of Mansoura told Bikyamasr.com. Joined by several other members of April 6 and various students from Mansoura University, the group began an impromptu march around the city, calling people out of their homes along the way. “Come down!” they yelled, at anyone who looked out their window. Before long, the ad-hoc march numbered upwards of 200 people. For the following two days the marches continued, beginning each time from inside Mansoura University's campus and circling between the city's main administrative building and the Interior Ministry's headquarters. The demonstrators were not officially organized by any political party, did not hold party banners, and made no reference to a civil or a religious state along the way – and only the Muslim Brotherhood of Mansoura made it clear they would not be participating. By Monday, the march had escalated both in terms of participation and organization. A Facebook group sent out the night before by April 6 of Mansoura called on all Mansourans to join them in protests against military rule. Upwards of 1000 clogged some of the city's main streets during the middle of the day as volunteers tried their best to rope the marchers in, herding them into a space that would allow some semblance of traffic flow. Along the way, demonstrators screamed various chants directed at the fall of the military council. For nearly four consecutive days, marchers in Mansoura had managed to direct their energy at peaceful demonstration without either clashes or destruction of government property. On Monday evening, however, the scene abruptly escalated, as demonstrators at the Interior Ministry's headquarters climbed onto security personnel vehicles, prompting several rounds of tear gas and the marching of riot police to clear the scene. In the midst of the chaos, one demonstrator, a university student by the name of Omar Darwish, was shot with a rubber bullet to the head; Darwish was rushed to the hospital after sustaining a fracture to his skull. Following the night's events, April 6 of Mansoura called on the city to participate in a million man march on Tuesday, demanding a transitional government replace the military council and investigations be conducted into the recent violence at Tahrir Square. BM
