At a quarter past seven on Saturday evening in Cairo, a young resident from Kasr Al Aini hospital, one of the city’s largest, called me. I had met him at the hospital earlier that day, but the situation, he said, was now much worse: he and a number of other doctors had sequestered themselves in a small room adjacent to the operating theatre in the hospital’s older building. Looters had entered the building with guns and knives, stealing things and killing people. He said that there was no one they could call for protection. They had had to abandon patients in intensive care.
When the managing editor of Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Arabic and English newspaper where I work, reached the doctor again ten minutes later, his voice was panicked, and all that was discernible amid the noise was the same message: the doctors and patients in Kasr Al Aini hospital were trapped, as looters advanced with weapons.
If the protests this week demonstrated anything, it was the thuggishness, ineptitude, and corruption of the Egyptian police force. After protesters by the thousands pushed them from the streets of Cairo, the mood was celebratory, but then the looting began. Suddenly, the lack of a proper police force, one that has any regard for the safety of citizens, became abundantly clear. All over the city, people have gathered together in their homes while looters enter stores and residences, particularly in Maadi, Rehab, and Nasr City. Residents are roaming the streets with sticks, trying in any way they can to protect their homes and businesses from the looters.
Adding insult are reports that many of the looters are themselves police officers. But in the general chaos in Cairo it has become impossible to tell for sure. Because of fires at police stations, there are also rumors that prisoners have been freed, and that convicts have joined in the looting.
In Tahrir Square, where a large gathering remains, there have been five reported deaths, the result of gunshot wounds, among those who tried to get close to the Ministry of the Interior. (One of my colleagues told me that civilians were now warning others away from the Ministry.) On Saturday, Reuters reported that as many as seventy-four people may have been killed around the country, though there was great uncertainty about the number.
As Saturday began, residue from the night’s activities was still visible on the street. Burned cars, scattered police barriers, graffiti, and garbage gave the impression of a city ravaged and abandoned. By noon, carcasses of burned police vehicles had been cleared from major roads, including Kasr Al Nil bridge, but their removal did nothing to detract from the general atmosphere, which was tense with waiting.
I had met the young resident around 2 P.M., when I went with a colleague to the Kasr Al Aini hospital. I had been told by protesters that ambulances needed two hours or more to reach the wounded within the crowds—and there were many wounded. Rubber bullets, after all, are still capable of piercing the skin and organs and can be particularly fatal when shot at very close range. We were first approached by a young, female doctor who withheld her name. “Write in your newspaper that we need the army to come to the hospital,” she said. “There is no one here protecting the doctors, and it’s becoming chaos inside.”
The young resident had been assisting in surgeries the day before. He estimated the number of dead that he saw personally to be around forty-five. (That number is higher than in press reports for the area so far, and it was hard to evaluate, let alone confirm, in the disorder of the hospital.) He saw wounds from live bullets, not rubber bullets, shot to the head and chest. It cast a dismal sheen on the protests which, at this time yesterday, had seemed almost triumphant.
The army, at least in and around Tahrir, appears to still be giving hope to the protesters that they would ultimately be on their side. From the hotel balcony I could see a tank rolling down the corniche. Atop the beige vehicle a cluster of protesters rode jovially with three soldiers, one of whom was driving the tank. The streets were swarming with people, even after the curfew.
If there was any thought that yesterdays mass, organized protests would be the last, it was quelled the moment, right after midnight, that Hosni Mubarak addressed the country. The shortcomings of the speech are well reported, but perhaps most eloquently summarized by my colleague, who said, “Mubarak will burn the city before he feeds it.”
Read more from our coverage of the protests in Egypt and beyond.
