Sandbags Show Egypt Islamists Digging in Amid Protest
By Maram Mazen - Jul 25, 2013
Men in orange vests wielding wooden sticks guard the Cairo sit-in which thousands of Islamists say will only end when deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi is reinstated.
Behind them, protesters have built brick barriers and stacked sandbags to repel any attacks, a prospect that became more likely after military chief Abdelfatah Al-Seesi called for rallies today in support of a crackdown on Islamists. Doctors in five field clinics tend to anything from gunshot wounds to infected tonsils. A communal kitchen goes through five calves a day to prepare free meals for those holed in.
Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood is using the sit-in site in Nasr City as a staging ground for protests that have thwarted efforts by the military-led coalition to bring the stability it pledged after toppling the Islamist leader on July 3. The Brotherhood is planning 35 marches today to defy the army amid warnings that mobilization by the two foes risks dragging Egypt deeper into conflict.
“Not only we are continuing our sit-in, our determination has grown stronger,” Wael Yehia, who heads a makeshift media center at the site, said yesterday.
The influx of Islamists to the sit-in has emboldened the Brotherhood to spurn offers to join the interim government even after dozens of supporters were killed in clashes over the past four weeks. Without a negotiated resolution to the standoff, the country is “likely to continue to be mired in one political crisis after another,” said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst at the International Crisis Group in Cairo.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/sandbags-show-egypt-islamists-digging-in-amid-protests.html