CAIRO--Rock-throwing protesters fought riot police through clouds of tear gas near Egypt's Interior Ministry on a second day of clashes triggered by the deaths in Port Said of 74 people--the country's worst soccer disaster.
A demonstrator and an army officer were reported dead in Cairo and in the city of Suez two people were killed on Friday as police used live rounds to hold back crowds trying to break into a police station and fought in front of the state security headquarters, witnesses and the ambulance service said. Hundreds of protesters blocked roads near state security headquarters in Egypt's second-largest city Alexandria.
Most of those killed in the Port Said football stadium on Wednesday night were crushed in a stampede and the government declared three days of mourning. Protesters hold the military-led authorities responsible. It was the country's deadliest incident since an uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak almost a year ago and it gave fresh impetus to regular street protests against Egypt's ruling generals.
"We will stay until we get our rights. Did you see what happened in Port Said?" said 22-year-old Abu Hanafy, who arrived from work on Thursday evening and decided to join the protest.
The ministry in Cairo, a focus of hatred for football fans who say lax policing was to blame for the stadium disaster, has been hemmed in by street battles since Thursday. Thousands staged running battles with riot police throughout Friday, ignoring government appeals to end the violence.
Tens of thousands were protesting peacefully nearby in Cairo's landmark Tahrir Square after 28 youth activist groups and political parties called for a "Friday of Anger". A Reuters witness heard firing and found gun pellets on the ground. Demonstrators had heaved aside a concrete barrier blocking a main road near the ministry overnight to get closer to the building.
"We pulled it down with our bare hands," said Abdul-Ghani Mohamed, a 32-year-old construction worker. "We are the sons of the pharaohs."
Ambulances had to intervene overnight to extract riot police whose truck took a wrong turn into a street full of protesters. Police fired round after round of tear gas and the wind picked up on Friday afternoon to waft the fumes back to the police lines, leading the rioting protesters, some of whom waved soccer team flags, to cry "God is Greatest".
Some of the demonstrators, mostly men in their late teens and 20s, goaded police defending the neat five-story ministry building, shouting "The army, the police - one filthy hand".
