Friday, August 16, 2013

EGYPT - Crackdown Update

"Grief and Disbelief After Crackdown Chaos in Egypt" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 8/15/2013

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  The official toll in Wednesday's crackdown in Egypt rose sharply today to 638 dead and some 4,000 hurt.  Supporters of the former President Mohammed Morsi claimed that casualties were far higher, and they vowed not to give in.

Jonathan Rugman of Independent Television News reports from Cairo.

And a warning:  Some of the images in his story are graphic.

JONATHAN RUGMAN:  In a mosque in eastern Cairo, grief and disbelief, after Egypt's government killed hundreds of its own people on a single day.

The Iman mosque is full of bodies.  We reckoned around 200, though in this chaos, it was hard to tell, the dead and the living jostling for space.  One coffin was being used as an ice bucket to keep the bodies cool, but in the heat of a Cairo summer, the ice kept running low.

They are trying to keep the place clean, but a religious sanctuary has become a morgue.  This doctor told me most had been shot in the chest or head.  Many were badly burned.

Scores of bodies are still in this mosque because they haven't been claimed by their relatives, sometimes because they're too badly burned to be recognized.  The word massacre does seem to fit the picture here.

Egypt's own Health Ministry now admits that over 200 people died near here yesterday.  But the government blames the protesters.



"In the Wake of Turmoil and Bloodshed, Should the U.S. Suspend Aid to Egypt?" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 8/15/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Barack Obama condemned the Egyptian government's use of violent force on protesters but stopped short of suspending $1.5 billion in aid the U.S. provides to Egypt each year.  Judy Woodruff asks former U.S. ambassador Nicholas Burns and Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch for views on how the U.S. should proceed.

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