Egypt's cabinet has approved a draft law giving the army the right to arrest civilians and assist the police in providing security, a cabinet source told Reuters on Monday after the death toll in five days of anti-government protests rose to 50.
The source said the army would "behave like a police force" meaning that any detainees would go to a civilian and not military court. He did not say if the army's right to make arrests extended across Egypt or just applied to Suez Canal cities where the president had declared a state of emergency.
Meanwhile thousands of people turned out on the streets of Port Said on Monday to attend the funerals of the latest victims of violence in the Egyptian city.
The mourners bore coffins above their heads and some waved teargas canisters at the camera. Seven people were killed on Sunday at funerals for the 33 who had died in riots a day earlier.
Gunshots were heard and teargas was fired during Sunday's processions where rage turned against the government, but there were no immediate reports of a repeat of those incidents on Monday.
In Cairo, riot police fired tear gas at rock-throwing protesters. The eruption of violence, which began around Friday's second anniversary of the uprising that toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak, has plunged Egypt once again into political turmoil and exposed the deep fault lines running through the country.
President Mohammed Morsi, who has struggled to address the country's daunting social and economic problems since taking power in June, declared in a televised speech late Sunday a 30-day state of emergency in the cities of Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez and their surrounding provinces in an attempt to quell the unrest. The military was deployed in Suez on Friday and in Port Said the next day. The two cities have been hit the hardest by the violence.
Protesters in all three cities poured into the streets after Morsi's speech to reject both him and his state of emergency, which includes a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. In Port Said, where 44 people killed in rioting over the weekend, at least 2,000 protesters chanted against the Egyptian president and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which he hails.
The unrest in Port Said was sparked by a court conviction and death sentence for 21 defendants involved in a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium on Feb. 1, 2012 that left 74 dead. Most of those sentenced to death were local soccer fans from Port Said, deepening a sense of persecution that Port Said's residents have felt since the stadium disaster, the worst soccer violence ever in Egypt.
At least another 11, most of them in Suez, died in clashes Friday elsewhere in the country during rallies marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Mubarak nearly two years ago. Protesters used the occasion to denounce Morsi and the Brotherhood, which emerged as the country's most dominant political force after Mubarak's ouster.
In his televised address, Morsi also warned that he would not hesitate to take more action to stem the violence.
Angry and at times screaming and wagging his finger, the Egyptian leader also invited the nation's political forces for talks to resolve the nation's crisis, saying "a dialogue between the sons of the nation is indispensable and is the only way to shepherd Egypt to security and stability."
Among those invited to Monday's talks is pro-reform leader and Nobel peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei and other leaders of the National Salvation Front, an umbrella group of opposition parties.
The invitation, however, was met with little enthusiasm from the opposition leaders.
"Any dialogue is a waste of time unless the president acknowledges his responsibility for the bloody events, pledges to form a national salvation government and a balance commission to amend the constitution," ElBaradei wrote on Twitter early on Monday.
Another Salvation Front leader, the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, set conditions on his participation: "Halt the bloodletting, respect for the popular will and placing political solutions ahead of security measures are conditions for a serious dialogue."
ElBaradei, Sabahi and other opposition leaders have boycotted Morsi's previous calls for dialogue, saying he did not have the political will to effect change.
Salvation Front leaders are meeting later on Monday, when they are expected to decide whether to participate in the dialogue.
The National Salvation Front said
the Islamist leader's call to hold talks on Monday was "cosmetic and not
substantive", a leading member of the coalition, Mohamed ElBaradei, told a
news conference after the opposition politicians met.
The talks were called by Morsi to
resolve a political crisis and end violence on the streets during
anti-government protests that has led to 50 deaths. The coalition's conditions
included a demand that Morsi accept responsibility for the bloodshed.
AP/REUTERS