Death toll in latest Egypt clashes climbs to 11

CAIRO — The number of people killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces in the wake of a deadly soccer riot rose to 11 on Saturday, according to a field doctor and a security official, as demonstrators in Cairo kept up their calls for an end to military rule and retribution for those killed in the soccer game violence.

Several hundred protested in the capital's Tahrir Square and near the Interior Ministry on Saturday morning, demanding police reforms. Others chanted for the execution of Egypt's military ruler who has been accused of mismanaging the country's transition to democracy. Clashes broke out later in the day, with protesters reporting that police fired new rounds of tear gas on crowds near the ministry.

The protesters are also angry with the police, accusing security forces of failing to prevent the attack and stampede after Wednesday's soccer game in the Mediterranean city of Port Said that killed 74 people. It was Egypt's deadliest soccer riot and the world's worst soccer violence in 15 years.

It also highlighted the inability, and some say unwillingness, of Egypt's security forces to prevent such attacks in the year since former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster.

On Friday, security forces in the port city of Suez opened fire on a crowd of several thousand outside the police headquarters. A total of five people were killed, a police official said Saturday. Egypt's state-new agency MENA reported the victims ranged in age between 18 and 21 years, and that the most recent victim died of a gunshot wound Saturday that he sustained the previous day.

By Saturday morning, five protesters were also reported dead in Cairo after security forces used tear gas and birdshot to disperse thousands rallying outside the Interior Ministry the day before. The death toll was provided by the security official and a volunteer doctor.

Abdolheliem Mahmoud, the doctor at a field hospital in Tahrir Square, said the latest victims died Saturday from birdshot to the head or chest sustained in overnight clashes. Another protester was in critical condition, he said.

Field hospitals were set up in streets near the Interior Ministry to assist hundreds of cases of suffocation from tear gas inhalation on Friday.

The Health Ministry said Saturday that 2,500 people have been injured in three days of clashes in Egypt.

Also, a security officer died after an armored police vehicle ran him over in the mayhem outside the ministry Friday, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with police regulations.