Egyptian police clashed with anti-government protesters for a fifth day in central Cairo Wednesday as a rights group raised the overall death toll from the ongoing unrest to at least 38. The United Nations strongly condemned what it called the use of excessive force by security forces.
In the eight months since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's ruling military has postponed presidential elections, extended a controversial emergency law, cracked down on peaceful demonstrators and arrested critics.
Egypt's finance minister resigned Tuesday to protest the government's handling of weekend protests that left 26 dead, most of them Coptic Christian demonstrators, an aide to the minister said.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians filled Cairo's central Tahrir Square for a rally Friday that turned into a show of force for ultraconservative Salafi Muslims and other Islamists in their growing rift with liberal activists.
CAIRO | The soldiers shouted, "Raise your head high - you're Egyptian."
Egypt's government, meeting a key demand by protesters, fired nearly 700 top police officers Wednesday to cleanse the discredited and widely unpopular force, state television reported.
Egypt's military rulers sternly warned protesters on Tuesday against "harming public interests" as demonstrators continued to lay laid siege to Cairo's largest government building and threatened to expand their sit-in to other sites in the capital.
When the history of the 2011 Arab revolts is written, it may be forgotten that the first pro-democracy uprising in the region was not Arab, but Persian. In June 2009, two years before a wave of democratic revolts swept through Tunisia, Egypt and a half-dozen other Arab dictatorships, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest an allegedly rigged election.
A dead terrorist outmaneuvered a living president on Thursday. Osama bin Laden’s final taped message was an eerie refutation of President Obama’s major Middle East policy address. Even in death, bin Laden launched a surprise attack with impeccable timing.
