Security Forces Storm Cairo Mosque, Capture Muslim Brotherhood Protesters
Including Brother of Al-Qaeda Leader
A gun battle has erupted between soldiers and Muslim Brotherhood protesters holed up in a mosque in central Cairo.
Egyptian TV footage showed gunmen firing from inside the minaret of the al Fath mosque in Ramses Square moments after images emerged of tear gas canisters being thrown at protesters inside the building.
Witnesses said tear gas was fired into the mosque prayer room to flush out protesters, who refused to leave the premises.
Pictures also showed soldiers dragging the supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi out of the building as they dismantled a makeshift barricade and stormed the building to clear it.
Egypts state MENA news agency later announced that prosecutors had placed 250 Muslim Brotherhood supporters under investigation for murder, attempted murder and terrorism.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has spoken to the Egyptian foreign minister, condemning the violence and stressing that attacks on mosques and churches are unacceptable.
The fresh violence flared after hours of negotiations between the two sides and news that Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el Beblawi had proposed disbanding the Muslim Brotherhood and that the idea was being considered by the government.
It also emerged that Mohamed al Zawahri brother of al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahri had been arrested in Egypt for supporting Mr Morsi.
Egypt: Gunfire Exchanged At Besieged Mosque
This probably bears posting yet again.....
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats