Death toll soars to 638 in Egyptian violence

Weeping relatives in search of loved ones uncovered the faces of the bloodied, unclaimed dead in a Cairo mosque near the smoldering epicentre of support for ousted President Mohammed Morsi, as the death toll soared past 600 on Thursday from Egypt’s deadliest day since the Arab Spring began.

World condemnation widened for the bloody crackdown on Morsi’s mostly Islamist supporters, including an angry response from President Barack Obama, who canceled joint US-Egyptian military manoeuvres.

Violence spread on Thursday, with government buildings set afire near the pyramids, policemen gunned down and scores of Christian churches attacked. As turmoil engulfed the country, the Interior Ministry authorised the use of deadly force against protesters targeting police and state institutions.

The Muslim Brotherhood, trying to regroup after the assault on their encampments and the arrest of many of their leaders, called for a mass rally on Friday in a challenge to the government’s declaration of a monthlong state of emergency and a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

At least 638 people were confirmed killed and nearly 4,000 wounded in the violence sparked when riot police backed by armoured vehicles, snipers and bulldozers smashed the two sit-ins in Cairo where Morsi’s mainly Islamist supporters had been camped out for six weeks to demand his reinstatement. It was the deadliest day by far since the 2011 popular uprising that overthrew autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak and plunged the country into more than two years of instability.

The Health Ministry said that 288 of those killed were in the largest protest camp in Cairo’s Nasr City district, while 90 others were slain in a smaller encampment at al-Nahda Square, near Cairo University. Others died in clashes that broke out between Morsi’s supporters and security forces or anti-Morsi protesters elsewhere in the Egyptian capital and other cities.