CAIRO: A number of truce initiatives succeeded to temporarily stop the violence near the Ministry of Interior (MOI) as sporadic clashes continued on Sunday. A tense calm earlier in the day followed fierce clashes on Saturday night despite other calls for calm. Hundreds of women organized a march in downtown Cairo, taking off from Qasr El-Aini Street in the vicinity of the Cabinet and the People's Assembly condemning the violence. The protest that was dubbed “the march of Egypt's mothers,” called on officials to stop killing children, and demanded retribution for the victims of Port Said and handing over power to civilians. "The military killed my children," they chanted. The women's march later joined another demonstration going to Mohamed Mahmoud St. to stop the violence. In solidarity with the women's march, a parliamentary delegation headed to Mansour St. to persuade protesters to move back to Tahrir Square. MPs Amr Hamzawy, Mostafa Al-Naggar, Hatem Azzam, Osama Yassin and Mohamed El-Sawy joined a number of families of Port Said's martyrs after their meeting inside parliament. The delegation entered the Ministry of Interior to discuss with officials suitable measures to stop the bloodshed, Al-Naggar said on his Twitter account. Meanwhile, Mazhar Shahin, Imam of Omar Makram Mosque in Tahrir Square, reportedly led a march of Azhar Sheikhs for the same purpose. Clashes broke out between protesters and Central Security Forces (CSF) on Friday following what is dubbed the “Port Said massacre” which claimed the lives of 74 soccer fans who were brutally attacked by hoards of thugs following a premier league match between Al-Ahly and Al-Masry. State television said early Sunday that an unidentified group had set fire to the Real Estate Tax Authority building near the ministry for the second time amid escalating clashes. Twelve protesters were killed since clashes broke out Thursday night at the ministry and 2,532 were injured, according to the health ministry. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim called upon the revolutionary youth and political powers to go to the ministry to “take a look at” the protesters. "If they recognize them they should ask them to withdraw to Tahrir Square to practice their right of peaceful protest. If they don't belong to any political power or movement, this means that they are infiltrators who want to destroy the country; this will give us the right to deal with them according to standard security procedures," he told a press conference Sunday. Ibrahim added that the government is keen not to harm a single revolutionary. "We are committed to the utmost measures of self-restraint," he said. Several initiatives to calm down the situation took place over the past few days. A meeting on Saturday, convened by the Youth Committee at the People's Assembly, lasted five hours as they brainstormed for an initiative by activists and MPs to stop the bloodshed. Meanwhile Ahmed Maher, coordinator of the April 6 Youth Movement, was injured in the head and transferred to Qasr El-Aini hospital suffering from a fractured skull and concussion. "While trying to call for a truce, a solid object was thrown on his head," Mahmoud Afify, spokesman of April 6, told Daily News Egypt. Participants in the initiative will continue exerting effort to stop the clashes and calm the "angry Egyptians protesting against the latest catastrophe," said Afify. Afifity blamed the sporadic violence on the central security forces, who, he says are the ones who break the truce by firing teargas. “The truce initiatives should be directed at the ministry not the protesters," Afify said. The interior ministry had reportedly approved Saturday the initiative of the PA's defense and national security committee to cease firing teargas for two hours, to appeal to the protesters to retreat from the area and to cordon off the ministry. According to the agreement suggested by Mohamed El-Beltagy, a Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) MP, the ministry has the right to arrest or use force against whoever crosses that cordon. Army forces build concrete walls in the middle of Mansour, Fahmy and Nobar Streets to separate the security forces from the demonstrators, state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA), reported. In Suez, where five protesters were killed amid clashes with police officers in front of the Suez security directorate, dozens of people marched to condemn the violence, according to state-run Al-Ahram newspaper. "Whoever loves Egypt doesn't destroy it," they chanted. "Police or people…we are all Egyptians." Al-Ahram added that when the march arrived to the directorate, security chief Major General Adel Refaat, told protesters that he is sure that those who commit acts of “sabotage” are not the people of Suez. On the other hand, another march meandered the streets of Suez on Saturday evening slamming the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the interior ministry amid a state of relative calm near the security directorate, where fierce confrontations between police and demonstrators had been taking place over the past few days.
A march by women dubbed the "march of Egypt's mothers" reached the PA to condemn the violence over the past few days. (Daily News Egypt photo / Hassan Ibrahim)
