QENA - Tens of thousands of protesters Friday massed in a southern Egyptian city governorate of Qena, who have cut off main roads in the past eight days over the appointment of a Coptic general as governor, calling for Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his deputy to resign. The protesters blocked the main roads after they briefly allowed traffic on Wednesday after the Cabinet decided not to replace Emad Mikhail Shehata, the new governor. "We have filed a report with the Chief Prosecutor against Sharaf and his deputy Yehia el-Gamal, who defy Qena people," said Mohamed Khalil, a Muslim cleric helping organise the protest. He added that the Friday demonstration is to push for the dismissal of Shehata. The demonstrators brought their protest to the rail lines again, after el-Gamal said that the governor would never be dismissed, infuriated them. Premier Sharaf has instructed Minister of the Interior Mansour el-Essawi to take the necessary moves to restore stability and re-operate public utilities. "This way the crisis could lead to bloodshed," said Sheikh Safwat Hegazi, a fundamentalist cleric who was in the governorate to persuade to the protesters to end their strike. "The Premier took the wrong decision. The public anger cannot be tackled in this way," he added. The protesters accuse el-Gamal of being part of the counter-revolution and of ignoring the Qena protesters the same way ousted former president Mubarak ignored the protesters in Al Tahrir Square during the January 25 revolution. The protesters were not happy with the new governor because Shehata is a former police official with allegedly close ties to the Mubarak regime and because he is the second Copt to hold the post in the province. As protests escalated, the angry locals blocked both the eastern and western highways and camped on the railway tracks, completely stopping trains from entering the province.
