CAIRO: A month-long state of emergency has been declared in Egypt by the interim president after violent clashes broke out between security forces and supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo on Wednesday that left thousands of people dead and injured.
The state of emergency started on Wednesday at 4:00 pm local time (14:00 GMT), the office of the interim president Adly Mansour announced in a statement.
The statement further said that the president also ordered the armed forces to support the police in their efforts to restore law and order and protect state facilities.
Earlier, Egypt’s health ministry said that at least 95 persons were killed and 874 others injured in clashes which erupted on Wednesday across the country as Egyptian security forces violently broke up sit-in camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo.
On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad claimed that at least 2,000 persons were killed and 10,000 others injured when security forces used teargas and fired gunshots into the air to forcefully disperse protesters who were staging sit-ins demanding the reinstatement of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque and at Nahda Square in Cairo.
The 17-year-old daughter of Muslim Brotherhood politician, Mohamed Beltagy, was also killed after security forces stormed a protest camp in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Moreover, an Egyptian Interior Minister official said that around 200 protesters including a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arrested in the security forces crackdown.
The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the violence used to disperse protesters from the capital.
