Morsi supporters torch government offices in Egypt

Angry supporters of Egypt’s ousted president on Thursday afternoon stormed and torched two buildings housing the local government in Giza, the city next to Cairo that is home to the famed pyramids. Associated Press reporters saw the buildings — a two-story colonial style villa and a four-story administrative building — set ablaze.

Egypt faces a new phase of uncertainty after the bloodiest day since its Arab Spring began, with at least 638 people confirmed killed and 4,000 injured Wednesday and Thursday as police smashed two protest camps of supporters of the deposed Islamist president.

Earlier Thursday, The Muslim Brotherhood, which backed deposed president Mohammed Morsi, vowed to bring down the coup via peaceful and called for supporters to take to the streets and stage a mass demonstration against the interim military government.

“We will always be nonviolent and peaceful. We remain strong, defiant and resolved,” Brotherhood official Gehad El-Haddad wrote on Twitter. “We will push until we bring down this military coup.”

Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters responded to the call and took to the streets Thursday afternoon in the coastal city of Alexandria as well, Reuters reported.

Tamarod, the youth movement that organized the mass rallies preceding Morsi’s ouster on July 3, called for the creation of popular committees to protect government and private property.

Raids Wednesday touched off day-long street violence that prompted the military-backed interim leaders to impose a state of emergency and curfew, and drew widespread condemnation from the Muslim world and the West, including the United States.

On Thursday, Egypt’s Health Ministry said that 481 civilians and at least 43 security officers were killed during the previous day, bringing the the death tally to 525. A ministry spokesman, Khaled el-Khateeb, said Thursday afternoon that the number of injured in Wednesday’s violence stood at 3,717.

A Reuters reporter said that during his reporting he saw at least 200 bodies in a single mosque. It was not clear if they were considered as part of official death toll.

The end of the night-time curfew brought Cairenes slowly back into the streets that a day before witnessed running street battles between police officers and Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei resigned as Egypt’s interim vice president in protest of the violence — a blow to the new leadership’s credibility with the pro-reform movement.

Interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said in a televised address to the nation that it was a “difficult day” and that he regretted the bloodshed, but he offered no apologies for moving against Morsi’s supporters, saying they were given ample warnings to leave and he had tried foreign mediation efforts.

The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood called it a “massacre” claiming that over 2,000 people had been killed.

Several Brotherhood leaders were detained as police swept through two sit-in sites, scores of other Islamists were taken into custody, and the future of the once-banned movement was uncertain.

Backed by helicopters, police fired tear gas and used armored bulldozers to plow into the barricades at the two protest camps in different sections of Cairo where the Morsi supporters had been camped since before he was ousted by the military July 3.

The smaller camp — near Cairo University in Giza — was cleared of protesters relatively quickly, but it took about 12 hours for police to take control of the main sit-in site near the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in Nasr City that has served as the epicenter of the pro-Morsi campaign and had drawn chanting throngs of men, women and children only days earlier.

After the police moved on the camps, street battles broke out in Cairo and other cities across Egypt. Government buildings and police stations were attacked, roads were blocked, and Christian churches were torched, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said.

The government declared a month-long nationwide state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew on Cairo, Alexandria on the Mediterranean and 12 other provinces where violence broke out following the simultaneous raids.

Anger over Morsi’s ouster already has led to an increase in Islamic militant violence in the northern half of the Sinai Peninsula that borders Israel and Gaza, and many fear growing anger over the crackdown and deaths of civilians could be exploited by extremists.

The turmoil was the latest chapter in a bitter standoff between Morsi’s supporters and the interim leadership that took over the Arab world’s most populous country. The military ousted Morsi after millions of Egyptians massed in the streets at the end of June to call for him to step down, accusing him of giving the Brotherhood undue influence and failing to implement vital reforms or bolster the ailing economy.

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Several senior leaders of the Brotherhood who were wanted by police were detained after the camps were stormed, according to security officials and state television. Among those seized were Brotherhood leaders Mohammed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian, and hard-line cleric Safwat Hegazy — all wanted by prosecutors to answer allegations of inciting violence and conspiring to kill anti-Morsi protesters.

Morsi himself has been held at an undisclosed location since the coup, and on Thursday, the Egyptian state media reported that the interim government extended the detention of Morsi for a full 30 days.Other Brotherhood leaders have been charged with inciting violence or conspiring in the killing of protesters.

The Brotherhood has spent most of the 85 years since its creation as an outlawed group or enduring crackdowns by successive governments. The latest developments could provide authorities with the grounds to once again declare it an illegal group and consign it to the political wilderness.

In his televised address, el-Beblawi said the government could not indefinitely tolerate a challenge to authority that the 6-week-old protests represented.

“We want to see a civilian state in Egypt, not a military state and not a religious state,” he said.

But the resignation of ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear agency and a figure widely respected by Western governments, was the first crack to emerge in the government as a result of the violence.

ElBaradei had made it clear in recent weeks that he was against the use of force to end the protests. At least 250 people have died in previous clashes since the coup that ousted Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.

On Wednesday, his letter of resignation to interim President Adly Mansour carried an ominous message to a nation already torn by more than two years of turmoil.

“It has become difficult for me to continue to take responsibility for decisions I disapprove of, and I fear their consequences,” he said in the letter that was emailed to The Associated Press. “I cannot take responsibility before God, my conscience and country for a single drop of blood, especially because I know it was possible to spare it.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the violence had dealt a “serious blow” to Egypt’s political reconciliation efforts, and gave a stern warning to Egypt’s leaders.

“This is a pivotal moment for all Egyptians,” said Kerry, who spoke by phone with the foreign minister. “The path toward violence leads only to greater instability, economic disaster and suffering.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all Egyptians to focus on reconciliation, while European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said dialogue should be encouraged through “peaceful protest, protecting all citizens and enabling full political participation.”