Egypt’s government threatened yesterday to ban the Muslim Brotherhood, the once-outlawed organization of religious militants that swept to power in the country’s first democratic elections a year ago.
The warning came as government troops raided the al Fath mosque in Cairo, rounding up hundreds of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Brotherhood.
Gunmen on the mosque’s grounds had sparked an exchange of bullets by opening fire from a minaret onto the security forces below, the state-run news agency said.
Some 173 people were killed in the mosque violence; they’re among about 800 people who have died in recent conflicts. Thousands have been injured.
Despite the danger that a ban would further fan the flames, pro-government forces support it. “We are calling for declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist group,” said Mohammed Abdel-Aziz, a leader of an anti-Morsi youth movement.
The mosque was eventually cleared, several state security officials said, adding that the group planned to turn it into a new sit-in protest camp.
Brotherhood supporters and state forces have been spilling blood in intensified conflicts since Wednesday, when imams took to minarets calling for jihad following the state’s crackdown on pro-Morsi agitators.
Within hours, riot police, military helicopters, snipers and bulldozers broke up two sit-in protests by Morsi supporters.
But much of the violence is being instigated by Brotherhood supporters themselves, officials said.
Christian-rights activist Mina Thabet told the Sunday Times of London yesterday that since the call for jihad, at least 32 churches had been “completely destroyed, burned or looted” in eight locations.
Another 19 churches were attacked and partly damaged.
The Brotherhood had called for a “Day of Rage” on Friday. In response, an armed mob of Brotherhood supporters burst into a largely-Christian neighborhood in Minya, 150 miles south of Cairo.
Some 200 to 300 Brotherhood supporters, together with more extreme salafist Islamists, attacked the town’s fifth-century monastery and burned a Coptic church.
Then they turned their wrath on about 20 Christian homes, witnesses told the British newspaper.
“Islamiya! Islamiya!” — Islamic! Islamic! — the armed mob shouted as they looted and incinerated homes.
When a 60-year-old barber fired his own gun into the air to try to scare them away from his home, he was shot to death and chopped into pieces, said a Coptic Christian priest.
“They took offense at the fact that a Christian fired in the air against them,” said the priest, Ayoub Youssef, 40.
The police, army and state-security forces did nothing to protect the town, Youssef told the Sunday Times.