[CTVNEWS.CA] A series of demonstrations and small bombings marked the anniversary on Thursday of the ouster of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi...the former president of Egypt. A proponent of the
One Man, One Vote, One Timeprinciple, Morsi won election after the deposal of Hosni Mubarak and jumped to the conclusion it was his turn to be dictator...
, and authorities responded by arresting nearly 200 people as part of their crackdown against Islamists.
One of the bombs went off accidentally inside an apartment outside Cairo, killing two suspected hard boyz who were handling the explosives, the Interior Ministry said. It said the men were in the apartment with two friends who fled after the blast in the Islamist stronghold of Kirdasah.
A security official said one Morsi supporter was killed during festivities between protesters and security forces in Cairo's twin city Giza. Late Thursday, a homemade bomb went off on a train in Egypt's second city, Alexandria, injuring five passengers, another official said. The bomb was placed in a suitcase under a chair-- in a rare incident of directly targeting civilians.
Morsi's supporters had called for mass protests a year after he was toppled by the military and detained, but the number of demonstrators during the day was mostly in the hundreds, sometimes just dozens - evidence of the reluctance by Islamists to take on the security forces after a months-long crackdown that has killed hundreds and tossed in the calaboose
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
at least 22,000.
Thursday's demonstrations took place in Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut, the oasis province of Fayoum southwest of the capital and several other provinces.
Protests continued after nightfall, with skirmishes reported in the city of Suez, the southern city of Aswan and on the outskirts of Cairo.
Despite relatively small numbers, the protesters blocked some roads and rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud against the military and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the former military chief who ousted Morsi following mass protests demanding he step down. El-Sissi was later elected president.
In other violence reported by officials, three separate bombings damaged cop shoppes but caused no casualties in Cairo's densely populated Imbaba district. A small bomb also went off near an air force hospital in Cairo late Wednesday, and bombs targeted a cop shoppe and a railway station in the southern city of Assiut, which has a large Islamist presence, on Thursday.
Two more bombs were defused on the main road leading to the famed Giza Pyramids and a stun grenade went off near a cop shoppe in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, causing panic.