Two die in clashes as Morsi supporters mark president’s first year in office

US citizen stabbed to death in Alexandria

A US citizen was stabbed to death in the Egyptian city of Alexandria yesterday during clashes between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi, a doctor and three security officials said.

Another man, an Egyptian, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head.

A US embassy official said: “The U.S. embassy has heard of the reports of the death of an American citizen and is seeking to confirm them.”

The young American man died from a wound to the chest, said General Amin Ezzeddin, a senior Alexandria security official.

READ MORE

The violence erupted when anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm offices used by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria, a city on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The American had been recording the events by camera.

“There were two deaths – an Egyptian, and an American who was wounded during the events. He was filming,” Ezzedin said. “He was wounded during his presence in the events and the clashes. He was wounded in the chest, he fell unconscious, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital,” he told Al Jazeera’s Egypt news channel.

Alexandria was once a Brotherhood bastion but now largely backs the opposition. Eighty-five people were injured and Muslim Brotherhood offices torched.

Supporters of the Brotherhood, Mr Morsi’s base, and ultra-conservative Salafis gathered in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City in a “million man” rally.

They carried portraits of the president, and chanted the slogan, “[His presidency] is for God, not for position or power.”

Many were bussed in from Brotherhood provincial strongholds, as metropolitan Cairo is largely pro-opposition. Cairo daily Al-Ahram reported the demonstration was smaller and less energetic than last Friday's massive rally.

Speaking for the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, Nader Omran said the opposition was free to protest “in a peaceful way” but not to “step over the line of legitimacy, which is with the president.”

Commenting on the deaths of four Brotherhood backers in the Nile Delta, party adviser Gehad el-Haddad said some “people think they can topple a democratically elected president by killing his support groups.”

Egypt’s premier Islamic institution, al-Azhar, issued a statement supporting Mr Morsi and urged “vigilance . . . to ensure we do not slide into civil war.”

Eleven fundamentalist political parties have formed a National Alliance for Legitimacy Support to “protect the Egyptian people’s democratic gains”. – Additional reporting: Reuters