RTC Director

New gunfire erupts in central Cairo

Heavy gunfire reverberated in central Cairo before dawn Thursday as supporters and foes of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak continued to face off at Tahrir Square, where chunks of concretes and Molotov cocktails were employed as weapons in the escalating crisis.

CNN personnel saw wounded people being carried into Tahrir Square, largely held by anti-regime demonstrators, through an entrance that leads to the nearby Egyptian Museum. Several ambulances entered and left the square shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday.

The source of the gunfire was not immediately known.

Voices were heard chanting a prayer after a day of violent street battles in central Cairo.

Sustained automatic weapons fire, including from what sounded like a heavy machine gun, echoed around the square, the epicenter of nine days of protests calling for Mubarak's ouster.

Anti-government demonstrators hunkered down behind makeshift barricades in the square and outside the nearby national museum against the onslaught, which demonstrators said included plainclothes police officers.

"They're coming in with weapons. They're spreading violence," human rights activist Gigi Ibrahim told CNN on Wednesday. "We've had peaceful protests here since Friday and no violence here. Only today were we faced with this really violent reaction."

The pro-government protesters were not impeded by the army when they entered the square, CNN's Ben Wedeman said early Thursday. Anti-regime protesters are now unhappy with troops, whose commanders had promised Monday not to use force against peaceful demonstrations, for standing by, he said.

Small fires burned in the square early Thursday, some spreading to trees and walls.

Egypt's health ministry reported three people were killed and 639 were wounded in Wednesday's clashes, according to the state television network. Reported fatalities in the previous eight days of demonstrations ranged as high as 300, but CNN has not been able to independently confirm the death toll.

In one surreal moment, whip-wielding Mubarak supporters thundered through the crowd astride horses and camels, and at least one man was pulled off his mount and beaten. A Mubarak supporter who spoke to CNN said the riders were pyramid workers who were protesting the negative economic impact of the crisis.

"What you are seeing is the demonstration of the real Egyptian people who are trying to take back their country, trying to take back their street," said businessman Khaled Ahmed, who described himself as "pro-Egyptian."

But some observers said the pro-Mubarak push Wednesday was likely orchestrated by a regime bent on breaking up peaceful demonstrations.

"These are tactics that are well-known in Egypt," Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN's John King.

Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution said the "rent-a-thugs" were likely sanctioned and paid by the government. This is meant to create an image of chaos so the government can move in to restore order, he said.

"Mubarak has -- now, certainly, with the violence today, but even before that -- lost the confidence of the overwhelming number of the Egyptian people," Kagan said.

As night fell, the sound of gunfire reverberated in Tahrir Square, the name of which means "liberation" in Arabic. People hurled verbal insults, Molotov cocktails, rocks and anything else they could find -- shards of metal, sticks, shoes -- at one another.

Desperate for more ammunition, they dismantled sidewalks and picked up chunks of cement to throw. They beat each other in what rapidly spiraled into utter mayhem.

Hundreds of injured people were treated by doctors and medical staff, who turned to volunteers for assistance.

CNN iReporter Hunter Moore, 26, helped treat the wounded. The U.S. schoolteacher said Tuesday's crowds at Tahrir Square were mostly peaceful. "It went downhill really, really quickly" on Wednesday, he told CNN.

It was unclear whether such confrontations were being repeated elsewhere. Other Cairo neighborhoods were calm, and rallies in Egypt's second-largest city, Alexandria, were largely peaceful.

Mubarak's opponents had stood shoulder to shoulder in Tahrir Square to call for his immediate resignation in a massive rally on Tuesday. The 82-year-old president's announcement that night that he would spend the remaining seven months of his current term working to ensure a "peaceful transition of power" failed to satisfy them, and they vowed to keep up the pressure on him to resign.

The crisis has paralyzed the Egyptian economy, as the government has closed banks, idled trains and shuttered schools. Markets are running short of basic food staples, and the situation is hurting the ability of ordinary citizens to join the demonstrations, opposition activist Ziad Aly told CNN.

"We can't get enough bread. We can't get enough food supplies," he said.

Vice President Omar Suleiman reiterated the government stance that the people have been heard, that they should go home and that they should stop demonstrating. Protesters should respect the curfew and "enable people to return to their jobs and their daily lives, and to allow schools and universities to reopen," he said in a statement.

The state-run television network, Nile TV, sought to portray the unrest as a "foreign conspiracy" fueled by international journalists, several of whom -- including CNN's Anderson Cooper -- were attacked during Wednesday's clashes.

Despite reports that shots had been fired, Nile TV's reporters denied any shooting had taken place or even that violence had broken out in Tahrir Square. The network also said that members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood were heading to the square "to throw balls of fire and to start acts of riots and violence."

When asked if that were true, Mohamed Morsy, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, said the action came from all segments of the Egyptian people, "not the Muslim Brotherhood only."

Morsy told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the time for change is now, not when Mubarak's term ends.

"We need a new era, a new regime," Morsy said. "We have a constitution."

Asked whether Suleiman could lead the government until new elections, Morsy said the head of the country's supreme court should fulfill that role.

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said an end to violence was "imperative."

"It is our hope that what we saw today, we won't see tomorrow or Friday or into the weekend," he said.

But Mubarak's government bluntly told outsiders to mind their own business.

"Our interactions within our country are Egyptian affairs and nothing more than that," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said. Egypt "will continue to be a beacon of moderation and stability in our region," he said, but its people must settle their differences without "intervention from the outside."

Though Mubarak's concessions were large and remarkable for a man who has held a tight grip on power for three decades, it was too little, too late for many Egyptians.

"He is unfortunately going to continue the agony for another six or seven months," opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said Tuesday night.

However, Mubarak supporter Waleed Tawfik told CNN that not all Egyptians agree that Mubarak should step down immediately.

"Change will not happen overnight. There's not a magical button for change. Change will take time," he said.

The Egyptian army can't sit on the sidelines too much longer, or it could risk unraveling, said a foreign policy expert.

The army needs to pick a course of action by Friday, when more mass protests are expected after prayers, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN's "Parker Spitzer."

The Egyptian crisis is among the aftershocks of the revolt in Tunisia that forced that nation's longtime strongman to flee to Saudi Arabia in mid-January. In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh -- who has been in office for 32 years -- said Wednesday he will not run for president nor hand over power to his son once his current term ends in 2013.

SOURCE:CNN

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by RTC Director

Gulf of Mexico 'to recover from BP spill by end 2012'

The Gulf of Mexico will have largely recovered from the BP oil spill by the end of 2012, the administrator of the $20bn (£12bn) pay-outs fund has said.

Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said that compensation to those who lost revenue from the disaster would be based on this prediction.

Meanwhile, a judge has ruled that Mr Feinberg make clear to claimants that he is not independent from BP.

The Deepwater Horizon spill was the biggest in US history.

The fund was set up by BP in August to compensate those affected by the spill, and has so far paid out about $3.3bn to 168,000 people.

Mr Feinberg said experts have determined that most of the oil would have dispersed and the economy picked up by the end of next year. There will be a 30% recovery in 2011, he added.

But he also noted that the recovery of oyster harvesting may take longer.

'Hybrid entity'

The assessment was based mainly on reports from a Texas professor and a consulting firm.

Based on the predictions, Mr Feinberg has proposed that claimants receive twice the amount they lost in 2010, apart from oyster harvesters, who will be offered four times as much.

Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi, however, questioned the experts' predictions.

"While this office had hoped that the methodology would finally provide some transparency, this document provides no useful information to claimants beyond a simplistic multiplier and is based on very optimistic assumptions about unknown environmental and economic conditions," she said in a court filing.

A federal judge meanwhile said Mr Feinberg was not independent from BP and should not tell claimants that he is.

US District Judge Carl Barbier ordered that he clearly disclose in communications that he is acting for and on behalf of BP.

"The court finds that BP has created a hybrid entity, rather than one that is fully independent of BP," he said.

Mr Feinberg, who was appointed by BP and the White House, has faced repeated criticism about the time it is taking to pay out compensation, as well as the amount being handed out.

About half of the total 485,000 claims filed have been denied because of ineligibility or lack of documentation.

Louisiana resident Mike Helmer, a fishing guide, described the proposed offer as "a joke".

"He's asking people to sign away their rights for basically peanuts. I don't see anyone accepting this," he said . "This is an insult. This is unbelievable."

The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the Louisiana, killing 11 workers.

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by RTC Director

Turn for the Worse: Mubarak Backers and Opponents Clash

CAIRO – Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak charged into Cairo's central square on horses and camels brandishing whips while others rained firebombs from rooftops in what appeared to be an orchestrated assault against protesters trying to topple Egypt's leader of 30 years. Three people died and 600 were injured.

The protesters accused Mubarak's regime of unleashing a force of paid thugs and plainclothes police to crush their unprecedented 9-day-old movement, a day after the 82-year-old president refused to step down. They showed off police ID badges they said were wrested from their attackers. Some government workers said their employers ordered them into the streets.

Mustafa el-Fiqqi, a top official from the ruling National Democratic Party, told The Associated Press that businessmen connected to the ruling party were responsible for what happened.

The notion that the state may have coordinated violence against protesters, who had kept a peaceful vigil in Tahrir Square for five days, prompted a sharp rebuke from the Obama administration.

"If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

The clashes marked a dangerous new phase in Egypt's upheaval: the first significant violence between government supporters and opponents. The crisis took a sharp turn for the worse almost immediately after Mubarak rejected the calls for him to give up power or leave the country, stubbornly proclaiming he would die on Egyptian soil.

His words were a blow to the protesters. They also suggest that authorities want to turn back the clock to the tight state control enforced before the protests began.

Mubarak's supporters turned up on the streets Wednesday in significa

nt numbers for the first time. Some were hostile to journalists and foreigners. Two Associated Press correspondents and several other journalists were roughed up in Cairo. State TV had reported that foreigners were caught distributing anti-Mubarak leaflets, apparently trying to depict the movement as foreign-fueled.

After midnight, 10 hours after the clashes began, the two sides were locked in a standoff at a street corner, with the anti-Mubarak protesters hunkered behind a line of metal sheets hurling firebombs back and forth with government backers on the rooftop above. The rain of bottles of flaming gasoline set nearby cars and wreckage on the sidewalk ablaze.

The scenes of mayhem were certain to add to the fear that is already running high in this capital of 18 million people after a weekend of looting and lawlessness and the escape of thousands of prisoners from jails in the chaos.

Soldiers surrounding Tahrir Square fired occasional shots in the air throughout the day but did not appear to otherwise intervene in the fierce clashes and no uniformed police were seen. Most of the troops took shelter behind or inside the armored vehicles and tanks stationed at the entrances to the square.

"Why don't you protect us?" some protesters shouted at the soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told people to go home.

"The army is neglectful. They let them in," said Emad Nafa, a 52-year-old among the protesters, who for days had showered the military with affection for its neutral stance.

Some of the worst street battles raged near the Egyptian Museum at the edge of the square. Pro-government rioters blanketed the rooftops of nearby buildings and hurled bricks and firebombs onto the crowd below — in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds. Plainclothes police at the building entrances prevented anti-Mubarak protesters from storming up to stop them.

The two sides pummeled each other with chunks of concrete and bottles at each of the six entrances to the sprawling plaza, where 10,000 anti-Mubarak protesters tried to fend off more than 3,000 attackers who besieged them. Some on the pro-government side waved machetes, while the square's defenders filled the air with a ringing battlefield din by banging metal fences with sticks.

In one almost medieval scene, a small contingent of pro-Mubarak forces on horseback and camels rushed into the anti-government crowds, trampling several people and swinging whips and sticks. Protesters dragged some riders from their mounts, throwing them to the ground and beating their faces bloody. The horses and camels appeared to be ones used to give tourists rides around Cairo.

Dozens of men and women pried up pieces of the pavement with bars and ferried the piles of ammunition in canvas sheets to their allies at the front. Others directed fighters to streets needing reinforcements.

The protesters used a subway station as a makeshift prison for the attackers they managed to catch. They tied the hands and legs of their prisoners and locked them inside. People grabbed one man who was bleeding from the head, hit him with their sandals and threw him behind a closed gate.

Some protesters wept and prayed in the square where only a day before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of a quarter-million, the largest demonstration so far.

Egyptian Health Minister Ahmed Sameh Farid said three people died and at least 611 were injured in Tahir Square. One of those killed fell from a bridge near the square; Farid said the man was in civilian clothes but may have been a member of the security forces.

Farid did not say how the other two victims, both young men, were killed. It was not clear whether they were government supporters or anti-Mubarak demonstrators.

After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the uprising in Tunisia took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of demonstrations across this nation of 80 million. For the past few days, protesters who camped out in Tahrir Square reveled in a new freedom — publicly expressing their hatred for the Mubarak regime.

"After our revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it for us," said Ahmed Abdullah, a 47-year-old lawyer in the square.

Another man shrieked through a loudspeaker: "Hosni has opened the door for these thugs to attack us."

The pressure for demonstrators to clear the square mounted throughout the day, beginning early when a military spokesman appeared on state TV and asked them to disperse so life in Egypt could get back to normal.

It was a change in attitude by the army, which for the past few days had allowed protests to swell with no interference and even made a statement saying they had a legitimate right to demonstrate peacefully.

Then the regime began to rally its supporters in significant numbers for the first time, demanding an end to the protest movement. Some 20,000 Mubarak supporters held an angry but mostly peaceful rally across the Nile River from Tahrir, responding to calls on state TV.

They said Mubarak's concessions were enough. He has promised not to run for re-election in September, named a new government and appointed a vice president for the first time, widely considered his designated successor.

They waved Egyptian flags, their faces painted with the black-white-and-red national colors, and carried a large printed banner with Mubarak's face as police officers surrounded the area and directed traffic. They cheered as a military helicopter swooped overhead.

They were bitter at the jeers hurled at Mubarak.

"I feel humiliated," said Mohammed Hussein, a 31-year-old factory worker. "He is the symbol of our country. When he is insulted, I am insulted."

Sayyed Ramadan, a clothing vendor said: "Eight days with no security, safety, food or drink. I earn my living day by day. The president didn't do anything. It is shame that we call him a dog."

Emad Fathi, 35, works as a delivery boy but since the demonstrations, he has not gone to work.

"I came here to tell these people to leave," he said. "The mosques were calling on people to go and support Mubarak," he said.

The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force him out by Friday.

State TV said Vice President Omar Suleiman called "on the youth to heed the armed forces' call and return home to restore order." From the other side, senior anti-Mubarak figure Mohamed ElBaradei demanded the military "intervene immediately and decisively to stop this massacre."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with Suleiman to condemn the violence and urge Egypt's government to hold those responsible for it accountable, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Protesters had maintained a round-the-clock, peaceful vigil in Tahrir Square since Friday night, when the military was first deployed and police largely vanished from the streets.

After celebrating their biggest success yet in Tuesday's demonstration, the crowd thinned out overnight. By morning a few thousand protesters remained. Mubarak supporters began to gather at the edges of the square a little after noon, and protesters formed a human chain to keep them out.

In the early afternoon, around 3,000 pro-government demonstrators broke through and surged among the protesters, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

They tore down banners denouncing the president, fistfights broke out, and protesters grabbed Mubarak posters from the hands of the supporters and ripped them to pieces.

From there, it escalated into outright street battles as hundreds poured in to join each side.

The battle lines at each of the entrances surged back and forth for hours. Each side's fighters stretched across the width of the four-lane divided boulevard, hiding behind abandoned trucks and holding sheets of corrugated metal as shields from the hail of stones.

At the heart of the square, young men with microphones sought to keep up morale. "Stand fast, reinforcements are on the way," said one. "Youth of Egypt, be brave." Groups of bearded men lined up to recite Muslim prayers before taking their turn in the line of fire.

Bloodied young men staggered or were carried into makeshift clinics set up in mosques and alleyways by the anti-government side.

Women and men stood ready with water, medical cotton and bandages as each wave returned. Scores of wounded were carried to a makeshift clinic at a mosque near the square and on other side streets, staffed by doctors in white coats. One man with blood coming out of his eye stumbled into a side-street clinic.

As night fell, some protesters went to get food, a sign they plan to dig in for a long siege. Hundreds more people from the impoverished district of Shubra showed up later as reinforcements.

Wednesday's events suggest the regime aims to put an end of the unrest to let Mubarak shape the transition as he chooses over the next months. Mubarak has offered negotiations with protest leaders over democratic reforms, but they have refused any talks until he steps down.

As if to show the public the crisis was ending, the government began to reinstate Internet service after days of an unprecedented cutoff. State TV announced the easing of a nighttime curfew, which now runs from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. instead of 3 p.m. to 8 a.m.

 

AP correspondents Sarah El Deeb, Hamza Hendawi, Diaa Hadid, Lee Keath, Michael Weissenstein and Maggie Michael contributed to this report.

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by RTC Director