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Brotherhood stays on streets despite killings

Thousands of supporters of Egypt’sMuslim Brotherhood stood their ground in Cairo on Sunday, saying they would not leave the streets despite ‘massacres’ by security forces who shot dozens of them dead.

Egypt’s ambulance service said 72 people were killed in Saturday’s violence at a Cairo vigil by supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi, triggering global anxiety that the Arab world’s most populous country risked plunging into the abyss.

Morsi’s Brotherhood, which won repeated elections after the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has vowed not to leave the streets unless Morsi is restored to power. His supporters accuse the military of reversing the uprising that brought democracy to the most populous Arab state.

‘They will not be content until they bring back everything from the era of the corrupt, murderous security and intelligence state,’ senior Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian said on Facebook. ‘They’ve stepped up their efforts to do so by committing massacres never before seen in Egyptian history.’

Although Cairo was quiet on Sunday morning, violent clashes rattled the Suez Canal city of Port Said, with a 17-year-old youth killed in fighting between the pro- and anti-Morsi camps and a further 29 people injured, security sources said. The violence has deeply polarised Egypt, with its secular and liberal elite so far showing little sympathy for the Brotherhood or reservations about the return to power of a military which ruled for 60 years before the 2011 uprising.   
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