CAIRO: The Egyptian Ministry of Health has lowered the official death toll of those killed in Cairo's Tahrir Square from 33 to 28, as reports of manipulated death certificates flow in from morgues and hospitals across the city. Egyptian authorities have reportedly forced the families of those killed in the square to sign documentation that their loved ones died of natural causes, in an attempt to keep an official death count low. Morgue officials and doctors at field hospitals throughout the city have reported that the number of wounded and dead sits much higher than Egyptian authorities have acknowledged. A medical source in the Zeinhom morgue near Cairo's Tahrir Square has told Bikyamasr.com on Tuesday that 71 Egyptians have been killed since clashes erupted Saturday, though this number remains unofficial. Some 14 were killed on Tuesday afternoon alone, according to numerous medical sources in the square and in hospitals throughout the city. The official death toll from the Egyptian Ministry of Health on Monday was 24, and after intensified violence racked protesters in the square all day on Tuesday, it is hard to imagine that the official death toll remains accurate at a mere 28. “We have had more injured and dead today than any day before,” said a nurse at a field hospital in the square on Tuesday afternoon around 1 PM. “We have treated about 480 people today for injuries, mostly from gas, live ammunition and rubber bullets,” she continued, despite the official number of wounded stagnating for the four days of conflict at 1,700. In Tahrir and the areas surrounding, the eye cannot miss a sea of casts, bandages, and the bodies of wounded and mourning, standing as evidence of the very breadth of the violence that has wrought downtown Cairo since Saturday. Authorities used the same tactic of death certificate manipulation after violence broke out at the infamous October 9 Mapsero protest, where 27 people at a demonstration advocating for Coptic Christian rights were swiftly gunned down by soldiers and run over with army personnel carriers (APCs). Authorities made morgue officials log deaths as “asphyxiation” rather than death by APC, and did not allow officials to document the deaths of those who had died from wounds suffered from live ammunition. Egyptian army officials denied the fact that they ran over protesters with the APCs at all, despite countless eyewitness accounts and video documentation that this had transpired. BM
