From AP:
CAIRO (AP) — Riots erupted in Cairo Sunday night as Christians protesting a recent attack on a church came under assault by thugs who rained stones down on them and fired pellets. Two soldiers were killed in the melee, according to state television, and a number of military vehicles were burning on a scenic street along the Nile.
Gunshots rang out at the scene outside the state television building, where lines of riot police with shields tried to hold back hundreds of Christian protesters chanting "This is our country." Thick black smoke filled the air from the burning vehicles. Security forces eventually fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.
An Interior Ministry official at the scene told The Associated Press that two people had been killed, but he did not say who they were or how they died. State television said 30 soldiers were injured.
Thugs with sticks chased the Christian protesters from the site, banging metal street signs to scare them off. One soldier collapsed in tears as ambulances rushed to the scene to take away the injured. Television footage of the riots showed some of the Coptic protesters attacking a soldier, while a priest tried to protect him.
The trouble began when thousands of Coptic Christians protesting the latest attack on a church in southern Egypt came under attack as they chanted denunciations of Egypt's military rulers, whom they accuse of leniency in dealing with a series of anti-Christian attacks.
"The people want to topple the field marshall," the protesters yelled, referring to the head of the ruling military council, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi.
The rally began in the
Shubra district of northern Cairo, then headed to the state television building overlooking the Nile where men in plainclothes attacked the Christian protesters.
It was not immediately clear who the attackers were.
Egypt's Coptic Christian minority makes up about 10 percent of the country's population of more than 80 million people. As Egypt undergoes a chaotic power transition and security vacuum in the wake of this year's uprising, Christians are particularly worried about the increasing show of power by the ultraconservative Islamists.
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http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Egypt
Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh reports from Cairo:
The confrontations continued up until a few moments ago, where impromptu scuffles still around various parts of downtown Cairo. Just in the past hour or so there were people who have been described by some as thugs and by others as hard-line Muslims, reportedly trying to break or to storm the Coptic hospital in downtown Cairo not very far from here where some of the Christian protesters injured in the attacks were taken to.
Certainly a very intense scene here in downtown Cairo, reflected also in the reaction of the government which has held an emergency meeting, and we are expecting any moment now Prime Minister Essam Sharraf to address the nation. That, at least, is a breaking news track appearing on state television at the moment.
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