Violent Clashes at Al-Wafd Headquarters Leave Dozens Injured
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The Skeptic الشكاك
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The bullet entered Mamdouh Badawi’s abdomen on the left side just above his hip and exited above the right hip. Badawi, who married two months ago, served Al-Wafd journalists tea and coffee for a living. He was one of almost two dozen people (Reuters is saying 23, I was only able to confirm 19 names) people injured in clashes between members of rival factions of the Wafd Party this morning. Around 8:00 a.m., deposed Wafd Party chairman Nomoan Gomaa arrived at the party’s headquarters in Doqqi. Between 30 and 40 men, armed with guns, clubs, and metal bars followed in microbuses and overpowered volunteer night guards and occupied the building. A confrontation ensued when journalists, Wafd Party activists, and support staff showed up for work and the armed men prevented them from entering the building. “I was sitting in the building, not doing anything, when Gomaa and his thugs arrived” Ahmed Mohammed Hossam (see photo), a 28-year-old night guard, said. “Gangs armed with clubs and metal bars started beating everyone in the building. Everyone was terrified. There were women there. The gangs took my identification card, all my money, and all my clothes. I was left naked. They said nobody could leave.” Hossam said he was treated at a nearby hospital and returned to the building. Eyewitnesses said one of the armed men holed up inside the shouted insults from a window by the front door. The journalists responded by throwing rocks and bottles. Police, who arrived at the party headquarters at the same time Gomaa did, tried to disperse the crowd with teargas, but this made matters worse. More bottles and rocks flew in both directions. Eyewitnesses said that the men holed up inside the building then shot five men around 11 a.m.. Word spread, and a crowd formed around the building, chanting slogans against Gomaa and periodically trying to force their way into the building (see photo). Gomaa and his supporters ransacked the headquarters’ archives and burned documents. At midday, journalists, Wafd Party activists, and young men affiliated with (or rented by) the faction loyal to Mustafa al-Tawil, elected as Wafd Party president when Gomaa was deposed in January, broke into the compound through a back entrance to an adjoining building (see photo). As they emerged from a basement corridor into the backyard, they clashed with Gomaa’s men. Men from each side threw Molotov cocktails, bottles, and rocks at the other. The building caught fire and was quickly extinguished, but not before several rooms were destroyed (see photo). Men from Al-Tawil’s faction forced their way into the back entrance and occupied the top floors of the building. Gomaa and his supporters were ensconced on the first floor. As Al-Tawil supporters chanted outside the building, their representatives argued with security forces at the front entrance—10 generals were on hand, one high-ranking Wafd Party member said—about whether the police should be allowed to storm the compound. Meanwhile, men loyal to each faction faced off at the staircase leading from the main lobby. At times men from either side would shout at each other, sometimes calling each other by name, sometimes throwing fire extinguishers at each other. At around 5:00 p.m., Wafd Party activists loyal to Al-Tawil cleared the building of all youths who were not party members. Around 5:15 p.m., soldiers massed outside the building. At around 5:45 p.m., soldiers pulled up to the building and, after a brief melee (see photos), arrested Gomaa and six supporters. I arrived in the afternoon, interviewed Wafd Party members protesting outside the building, and after about an hour managed to get into the building through the back entrance. I spent about 90 minutes on the staircase that formed the border between Al-Tawil’s supporters and Gomaa’s supporters and was there when police entered the building. When police did enter, they behaved professionally and had Gomaa out of the building in a few minutes. There were violent clashes when the doors first opened. I got as close as I felt I safely could in order to take pictures, but they all turned out blurry or too dark. As Gomaa left in an armored truck, the crowd swarmed the vehicle, shouting insults and slogans (see photos). A partial list of those injured follows (I hope to have a full list soon):
The injured were treated at Shabrawishi and Misr al-Dawli hospitals, not far from the Wafd Party headquarters. Mohammed al-Maliki was treated first for a bloody nose, then returned to the headquarters to be shot in the leg. This is not the first time factions of the Wafd Party and their hired thugs have clashed since Gomaa was deposed in January. He maintains that the assembly that voted to unseat deposed him (with 94.4 percent of the vote) was convened illegally since only he has the right to convene such an assembly. Thugs loyal to factions arrayed for and against Gomaa have clashed at party headquarters before. The Wafd Party, named after an unofficial delegation that travelled to Britain to lobby for Egyptian independence, dominated politics until the 1952 revolution, when political parties were banned. The party was founded again in 1983, but has had little affect on politics since. It won only six of 444 seats in the People’s Assembly in the 2005 elections, and Gomaa placed third in the presidential elections, winning only 2.9 percent of the vote. Technorati Tags: Egypt, Wafd, Al-Wafd Party, Gomaa, Noman Gomaa |
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