CAIRO, July 24, (Agencies): Groups of men armed with knives and sticks attacked thousands of protesters trying to march to the headquarters of Egypt’s military rulers, setting off fierce street clashes and leaving more than 100 injured, most lightly. Security fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Saturday’s clashes come as tensions mount between the military council that took control of the country after a popular uprising ousted ex-President Hosni Mubarak and activists who want them to move faster in bringing former regime officials to justice and setting a date for the transition to civilian rule.
The military has appeared impatient with the pressure, accusing activists of treason, warning protesters against “harming national interests” and calling on “honorable” Egyptians to confront actions that disrupt a return to normal life.
An estimated 10,000 people set out from downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square but were stopped from reaching the military headquarters in the eastern Abbasiyah neighborhood by a line of army barricades. Along the way, they chanted slogans against the military council’s delay in implementing their demands.
The march coincided with the 59th anniversary of the 1952 military coup that toppled the monarchy and brought a series of military leaders to office, ending with Mubarak.

“Down with the ruler of the military,” the protesters chanted.
Bands of men armed with knives and sticks set upon them from side roads and from in front of the military barricades, setting off pitched street battles in which both sides threw punches and hurled rocks.
Gunfire was heard, but it was unclear who was shooting. Some firebombs were thrown, igniting large blazes in the middle of the street and near buildings.
The identity of the attackers could not immediately be determined. Similar groups of men have tried to break up other rallies, and Mubarak’s regime often used hired thugs to attack protesters. Some witnesses said they might have been residents or shopkeepers angry at the loss of business as a result of the protests. Others said local residents threw water bottles to the protesters and helped them reach safety.
At one point, a man perched over a female protester, squeezing her against the wall where she was taking cover from the flying rocks. The man cursed her and accused her of being hired to cause chaos.
The man shouted: “Damn your revolution!”
An Associated Press reporter saw a firebomb flying from inside a garden lining a side street, landing at a distance from the protesters. The attackers then charged toward the protesters and accused them of throwing the flaming bottle.
“We are extremely angry. These are Egyptians beating us,” said protester Selma Abou el-Dahab.
A medical official said more than 140 people were hospitalized with wounds from thrown rocks and falling in the stampede. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.

The violence broke out following a televised speech by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling military council, who attempted to diffuse the tension by praising the youth who led the uprising that toppled Mubarak. The speech was to commemorate the 1952 coup anniversary.
Many protesters have grown distrustful of the military rulers who assumed control of the country on Feb. 11. A few hundred have been camped out in Tahrir Square since July 8 to pressure the military to bring those accused of killing nearly 900 protesters during the 18-day uprising to trial.
So far, only one low-ranking policeman has been charged in absentia for killing protesters.
Critics accuse the generals of dragging their feet in bringing former regime officials to trial and purging the government of Mubarak loyalists as well as trying civilians in military courts.
But not all activists supported the march toward the military council. Hafez Abou Saada, a prominent human rights activist and longtime democracy advocate, said the rally was a call “for confrontation that no one needs.”
An Egyptian man was killed on Sunday when police and soldiers traded fire with armed men who attacked a police station in the port of Ismailia to free a prisoner, security officials said.
They said at least 50 people attacked the police station with the aim of freeing a man who had been detained on suspicion of theft.
They said soldiers shot at the crowd after they were first fired upon, and that one man was killed and four people were wounded.

Syria
The Syrian army consolidated its grip on the hotbed city of Homs on Sunday, activists said, as embattled President Bashar al-Assad sacked the governor of a flashpoint province 48 hours after massive anti-regime protests.
Security forces also rounded up hundreds of civilians in Damascus and made arrests near Homs and in the town of Sarakeb in the northwestern province of Idlib near the Turkish border, activists said.
In Homs, troops backed by tanks “deployed heavily in Duar al-Fakhura and around the neighbourhood of Al-Nazihin,” said Abdel Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights.
He said the army could be “preparing to carry out a military and security operation in the region.”
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported a new military deployment in Homs, quoting an activist in the central city.
“Eight tanks entered the city from the Duar al-Jawwiya area and deployed in the streets linking Al-Khalidiyeh” neighbourhood to two others in the area, the Observatory said in a statement received by AFP in Nicosia.
It also said security forces made arrests in the village of Al-Sokhna east of Homs.
More than 50 people have been killed in the past week in Homs, activists have said, accusing the regime of sowing sectarian strife among the city’s Christians, Sunni Muslims and Assad’s Alawite minority community.

Residents of Homs, Syria’s third city, observed a strike on Saturday while the army encircled the city, cutting off its water and electricity.
Homs has spearheaded demonstrations against Assad and his regime since protests erupted on March 15.
The army had already entered the city in May to stop rallies calling for the fall of the regime, and launched a new operation earlier this week.
The crackdown on dissent prompted condemnations on Friday from France and Britain as UN officials spoke of the possibility of crimes against humanity being committed in Syria.
In Damascus, security forces arrested hundreds of people in the neighbourhoods of Qabun and Rukneddin, which has a mostly Kurdish population, Rihawi told AFP in Nicosia by phone.
“Army units set up roadblocks on routes into Qabun, controlling all entry and exit,” he said, adding that they had lists of wanted people.
Syrian Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said: “Soldiers armed with automatic rifles are deployed at the main routes into Qabun and in front of mosques.

“The security forces also searched homes looking for weapons, and made some arrests,” he said, adding that they ransacked homes but emerged empty-handed.
More than 15 people were arrested in the northwestern town of Sarakeb after residents blocked a strategic highway linking Syria’s second city Aleppo to Damascus, Abdel Rahman told AFP in Nicosia by phone.
“Army units who are deployed on the outskirts of the town opened fire to disperse the residents of Sarakeb who had gathered to cut off the highway that links Aleppo to Damascus,” he said.
“The security forces reopened the highway and then made arrests in the town, rounding up more than 15 people,” he said.
Forty-eight hours after Friday’s massive anti-regime protests in the eastern oil hub of Deir Ezzor, Assad dismissed the regional governor, the official SANA news agency reported on Sunday.
He issued a decree appointing Samir Othman al-Sheikh to replace Hussein Arnoos as governor, the agency said.
More than 1.2 million Syrians demonstrated in Deir Ezzor city and in Hama in the north, on Friday, according to Abdel Rahman, with more than 550,000 marching in Deir Ezzor, a major centre of anti-regime protests.

Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain has denied charges by Amnesty International that a planned anti-terrorism law will be used to stifle dissent and prevent pro-democracy protests.
“Amnesty International’s reference that this planned law will be used against what it describes as opposition rather than terrorists is wrong,” said Nawaf bin Abdulaziz in a statement carried on the official SPA news agency.
Amnesty International accused Saudi Arabia on Friday of planning a crackdown on public dissent with new anti-terror legislation that it said was a cover to stop further pro-democracy protests in the absolute monarchy.
Saudi Arabia, a key US ally and the world’s leading oil exporter, tolerates no dissent, has no political parties and its parliament is an appointed body with limited powers.
The Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing Terrorism, published on Amnesty’s website, would allow extended detention without charge or trial and impose a minimum 10-year jail sentence on anyone questioning the integrity of the king or crown prince.
It would consider “endangering...national unity” and “harming the reputation of the state or its position” as terrorist crimes and allow suspects to be held incommunicado for an indefinite period, if approved by a special court.

Saudi Arabia boasts of its success in thwarting attacks by al-Qaeda, which launched a violent campaign in the kingdom in 2003 that fizzled out in 2006. But Riyadh fears al-Qaeda militants could use their base in Yemen to restart operations.
The government also fears that Shiite Iran could stir up dissent among minority Shiites to destabilise the kingdom, home to Islam’s holiest sites.
“There have been many terrorist actions before... which resulted in the death of dozens of people and the spread of terror,” the ambassador’s statement said.
“Today, the eradicating of these (terror) cells is largely due to the efforts by the Saudi security forces. Despite that, the regional turmoil has provided a fertile ground for new threats,” he added.
Activists say thousands of people are held in Saudi prisons without charge or access to lawyers, despite a law that limits detention without trial to six months. The draft law would largely formalise such practices.
The draft published by Amnesty gives wide-ranging powers to the Interior Minister to take action to protect internal security, without requiring judicial authorisation or oversight.

Yemen
A suicide bomber drove a booby-trapped car into an army checkpoint outside Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on Sunday, killing at least nine soldiers and wounding 21 others, officials and medical sources said.
The attack, which the government blamed on al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing, comes weeks after the army deployed security forces to surround the coastal city, which lies east of a shipping strait where some 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
The military has been trying to stop militants from slipping into Aden, after they seized several areas in the neighbouring province of Abyan in recent months and presented a rising challenge to military control.
Unrest in the south has erupted as mass protests seeking to end President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule drag into a sixth month, setting off sporadic clashes across the fractious and impoverished country. Saleh is convalescing in Riyadh after a bomb blast in his presidential compound in June.
The Defence Ministry said the attacker, who also died in the explosion, hit a convoy at the checkpoint that had been headed to reinforce a military offensive on Abyan’s provincial capital of Zinjibar, which the army has been trying to recapture from militants for over a week.

“The suicide attack by al-Qaeda hit a convoy headed to Abyan ... the attacker died and his limbs were scattered around the area,” the ministry said in a mobile phone message sent to journalists in Yemen.
The blast comes days after a car rigged with explosives blew up and killed a British ship surveyor in Aden, which officials said was a targeted attack against the long-time resident.
Witnesses to the checkpoint attack on Sunday said they saw a car speed into a street cordoned off by armoured vehicles. It blew up, setting at least two of the vehicles ablaze as a cloud of smoke spread over the area.
“The car crashed into a military armoured vehicle, which exploded and caught fire. The soldiers started shooting heavily,” a witness said.
Abyan has descended into daily violence since militants seized at least two cities and a makeshift military base, forcing 54,000 residents to flee to Aden.
Security analyst Theodore Karasik, of the Dubai-based INEGMA group, said the style of the attack suggested al-Qaeda was behind it.

Libya
Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi launched a counter-offensive on rebels in the southwest on Sunday but were repulsed, after NATO warplanes blitzed military targets in the capital.
An AFP correspondent said rebels repelled an attack aimed at recapturing the desert hamlet of Gualish on the road to Tripoli which loyalist forces lost to the insurgents in fierce fighting earlier this month.
Rebels in Gualish said they had prevented regime forces from getting within at least a km (less than a mile) of the hamlet, and that they had been reinforced from Zintan, their main base in western Libya.
An AFP correspondent reported three hours of intense fighting as Gaddafi’s forces attacked Gualish and shelled the region before pulling back under rebel rocket fire as NATO warplanes flew overhead.
At least two people were wounded, the correspondent said.
In the capital itself, Gaddafi’s compound again came under NATO air attack.
“In Tripoli there were two command and control nodes, two surface-to-air missile launchers and one anti-aircraft gun (hit),” a NATO official said from the mission’s headquarters in Naples, Italy.
An AFP reporter reported two blasts at 00:50 am (2250 GMT) in the area housing Gaddafi’s residence, followed by more explosions in the eastern and southeastern suburbs.
Gaddafi’s complex was also targeted by NATO warplanes on Saturday, when the alliance confirmed seven strikes and said they hit a military command node.

A NATO official in Brussels told AFP Saturday’s strikes targeted the walls of the complex, hitting “guard towers because they were securing the command and control centre.”
Gaddafi said in an audio message broadcast on state television late Saturday that the unrest in Libya since a popular uprising erupted in mid-February was a “colonial plot.” He did not elaborate.
He also denied accusations by international rights groups of a brutal suppression of dissent and allegations that his regime had killed thousands of protesters.
“They lie to you and say, ‘Libya kills its people with bullets, that is why we have come to protect civilians’,” Gaddafi said of the UN-mandated NATO air campaign aimed at protecting civilians in Libya.
“Only eight people have been killed and an inquiry is under way to determine who killed them. There are no protests and no gunfire. Show us where the thousands of people are buried,” Gaddafi said.
Other targets attacked by NATO-led warplanes on Saturday included a military storage facility, a multiple rocket-launcher and a command and control node in the vicinity of the oil town of Brega in the east, the alliance said.

The latest NATO strikes came after rebel forces said they had infiltrated the capital and attacked a regime command post where a son of the strongman was among officials targeted.
The rebels said the assault “seriously injured” a high-ranking member of Gaddafi’s security forces.
On Thursday, “there was an attack on an operations centre of top regime officials, including Seif al-Islam Gaddafi,” National Transitional Council (NTC) vice president Ali Essawy said after meeting Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in Rome.
Meanwhile, Gaddafi heaped praise on toppled Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, describing him as “poor and modest” and saying he deserved honour rather than humiliation.
“I know Hosni Mubarak, a poor and modest man” who loves his people, Gaddafi said in an audio message broadcast on state television late Saturday to mark the anniversary of the 1952 coup in Egypt led by Gamal Abdel Nasser against the monarchy.
This “revolution,” Gaddafi said, had inspired him to lead a coup in Libya that toppled Western-backed King Idriss on September 1, 1969.
“Instead of being humiliated, Hosni Mubarak should be honoured,” Gaddafi said.
Mubarak, 83, whose three-decade rule ended with a popular revolt in February, is expected to go on trial on August 3 with his two sons on murder and corruption charges.
He is under arrest in a hospital in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, undergoing treatment for a heart condition.