Dozens hurt in Cairo protests against police brutality
They may be holding elections in Egypt but the military government has its hands full with the Muslim Brotherhood demanding they take over for the military immediately and protests against police brutality.
By Friday evening, the scene around the parliament resembled the worst bedlam of the January revolution. Plainclothes enforcers, called baltagiya, on top of the building threw plates, furniture, debris and firebombs at a swarming mass of mostly young protesters gathered around bonfires and assembling piles of rocks to hurl against security forces. Black smoke rose in the air from the upscale Garden City district, near the sites of both the UK and US embassies.
"The people want the execution of the field marshal," they chanted, in reference to Field Marshall Mohammad Hussein Tantawi, head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF.
Demonstrators have been occupying an area near the cabinet building in protest over the ruling military council's appointment of Kamal Ganzouri as interim prime minister. Mr Ganzouri served in the same post under the deposed President Hosni Mubarak and is despised by many of the young people who led the uprising against his rule.
Witnesses said the clashes erupted following allegations that security forces had abducted and badly beaten one of the demonstrators. Military police and demonstrators began throwing rocks, debris and Molotov cocktails at each other in the early hours of the morning. Security forces aimed water cannon at the protesters and set fire to their tents. Protesters also alleged that the plainclothes enforcers used by the previous regime to squash demonstrations had been deployed to arrest and haul away activists.
It's unlikely that the military will hand the government over to the Muslim Brotherhood before some kind of constitution is in place that guarantees their primacy and keeps parliament out of their affairs. Until then, there will be plenty of unrest as the occupiers seeks to depose them.