Egypt: Sadness And Confusion In Cairo, Leaders Announce Investigation
By MISNA
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the organ of power in Egypt since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February, has demanded the creation of a commission of inquiry into Sunday’s violence in Cairo resulting in 36 victims, according to the latest toll.
Meanwhile, in the cathedral of the capital, yesterday evening, the funerals of 17 victims were held. Thousands of faithful from the hospital accompanied the coffins to the church. The coroner responsible for the autopsy said that most of the bodies had been crushed by vehicles.
Last Sunday, several thousand members of the Coptic community demonstrated peacefully to protest the burning of an Orthodox church in the governorate of Aswan. Some people, perhaps infiltrators intent on sowing chaos, provoked the police, triggering a reaction that was disproportionate and indiscriminate.
Some witnesses said that military vehicles deliberately drove into the crowd, while the military threw lifeless bodies into the Nile to make them disappear. In addition to the 36 dead and 327 injured recorded by the Ministry of Health, there are also several people missing.
“There is an atmosphere of sadness and confusion,” a Christian source from Cairo told MISNA this morning. “We don’t yet know who is sowing the violence and for what purpose. Some say it is a clash between Christians and Muslims, but it seems that those intent on spreading chaos are neither Muslims nor Christians.”
“One thing is certain,” stressed the MISNA source, “the new political scenario Egypt is bringing to the surface old discriminations against the Christian community and other issues that have so far been hidden, such as a lack of confidence in the apparatus of the state “.
