Egyptians mourn soccer deaths

CAIRO (MCT) – The coffins came down the hill in intermittent procession Thursday as families focused their rage on security forces for not preventing a soccer riot that left 74 people dead and heightened the lawlessness threatening Egypt’s unfinished revolution.

Mothers wept and fathers railed as coffins were carried one by one from the morgue in Cairo. Sisters fainted and brothers, some with their own wounds bandaged, turned their heads as names were called and bodies, many wrapped in sheets, were collected and driven over a rutted road toward cemeteries across the city.

“I only had one child,” sobbed a mother, held up by friends. “He was my only one.”

Moments later, another name was called. A man’s hands reached toward the sky, his knees crumpled: “My precious is gone.”

Egypt’s military ruler declared three days of mourning for those killed Wednesday when hooligans from a soccer club in the coastal city of Port Said attacked opposing fans for the Cairo team Ahly with knives, clubs and chairs. The speaker of parliament condemned the violence as the “work of the devil.”

By Thursday evening thousands of protesters had marched on the Interior Ministry in central Cairo, their flares lighting the sky. Many were hard-core Ahly fans, known as Ultras, who have been the muscle at the forefront of some anti-government rallies.

They sought vengeance, hurling stones and attempting to yank down barricades with ropes.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas across barbed wire.