A young man next to the bodies of protesters killed on Wednesday. Many of the dead were shot in the head or chest; some appeared to be in their early teens.

DEATH TOLL HAS BEEN REVISED AND CURRENTLY STANDS AT 638…This figure will more than likely be revised again ….16/8

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CAIRO — The death toll from Egypt’s bloody crackdown on supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, soared beyond 500 across the land on Thursday with over 3,700 people injured, the Health Ministry said, in a further sign of the extent and the ferocity of Wednesday’s scorched-earth assault by security forces to raze two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo.

Despite the growing tally of dead, however, Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Mr. Morsi urged followers to take to the streets on Thursday, a day afterthe assault on the camps set off a violent backlash across Egypt and underscored the new government’s determination to crush the Islamists who dominated two years of free elections.

Mohamad Fath Allah, the Health Ministry spokesman, told the official Al Ahram Web site that the toll so far stood at 525 with 3,717 injured. He said the biggest concentration of killings — numbering 202 — had been in the larger of the two protest camps in Nasr City suburb, with 87 recorded in the smaller Nahda Square camp near Cairo University. A further 29 deaths were reported from the Helwan area on the outskirts of Cairo with 207 from other areas around the country.

The call for renewed demonstrations — threatening further bloody confrontation on the streets — came as an overnight curfew, ignored by some pro-Morsi figures who gathered at a mosque and other places, drew to a close and gave way to a brittle, muted calm in the city.

“We will always be nonviolent and peaceful. We remain strong, defiant and resolved,” Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote in a message on Twitter. “We will push forward until we bring down this military coup,” he said, referring to the ouster of Mr. Morsi six weeks ago.

The rubble in the main camp near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. Soon after the attack began, several thousand people appeared trapped inside.

The attack on Wednesday, the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since the overthrow, followed a series of government threats. But the scale — lasting more than 12 hours, with armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition and snipers — and the ferocity far exceeded the Interior Ministry’s promises of a gradual and measured dispersal.

The violence spread to other cities, and Adli Mansour, the figurehead president appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, declared a state of emergency, removing any limits on police action and returning Egypt to the state of virtual martial law that prevailed for three decades under President Hosni Mubarak. The government imposed a 7 p.m. curfew in most of the country, closed the banks and shut down all north-south train service.

At the camp, tents had electricity, televisions and Internet access, but much was left in ruins.

On the streets Thursday morning, the authorities continued to tamp down fires and clean up the debris of the razed protest camps. The city was quieter than usual, witnesses said, as some residents had their first glimpse of the damage.

The Health Ministry said Wednesday that 235 civilians had been killed and more than a thousand others had been wounded across Egypt. But the rate of dead and seriously injured people moving through the field hospitals at pro-Morsi sit-ins seemed to promise the true numbers would be much higher.

There were signs Thursday that those fears were being realized. According to news reports, a Health Ministry official revised upward an official tally of the dead, saying that 525 civilians had been killed throughout the country. The Interior Ministry added that 43 security personnel died, news reports said, and there were indications that the tally was still mounting.

Scores died and had their bodies taken to an improvised morgue.

At one landmark mosque, relatives stood over the bodies of up to 240 dead, shrouded in white and laid out in neat rows. The ice keeping the bodies chilled was melting as household fans played over the makeshift morgue. Many of the bodies seemed to be badly burned. One man slumped against a pillar, his face contorted in grief. By Muslim tradition, the deceased are usually buried within 24 hours of their death.

On Wednesday, at least one protester was incinerated in his tent. Many others were shot in the head or chest, including some who appeared to be in their early teens, including the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent Islamist leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy. At a temporary morgue in one field hospital on Wednesday morning, the number of bodies grew to 12 from 3 in the space of 15 minutes.

“Martyrs, this way,” a medic called out to direct the men bringing new stretchers; the hems of women’s abayas were stained from the pools of blood covering the floor.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamist group behind Mr. Morsi, reiterated its rejection of violence on Wednesday but called on Egyptians across the country to rise up in protest, and its supporters marched toward the camps to battle the police with rocks and firebombs.

Clashes and gunfire broke out even in well-heeled precincts of the capital far from the protest camps, leaving anxious residents huddled in their homes and the streets all but emptied of life. Angry Islamists attacked at least a dozen police stations around the country, according to the state news media, killing more than 40 police officers.

Daily News Egypt reported that this church in Beni Suef was also set on fire (Image source: Daily News Egypt)

They also lashed out at Christians, attacking or burning seven churches, according to the interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim. Coptic Christian and human rights groups said the number was far higher.

Photo of a church burned in Suez, Egypt on Wednesday (Image source: Twitter)
Muslim Brotherhood Supporters Have Attacked Churches Around Egypt in Apparent Retalliation for Military Crackdown

The crackdown followed six weeks of attempts by Western diplomats to broker a political resolution that might persuade the Islamists to abandon their protests and rejoin a renewed democratic process despite the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president. But the brutality of the attack seemed to extinguish any such hopes.

President Morsi, deposed by the Egyptian Army on 3/7 – Picture: Getty Images

The assault prompted the resignation of the interim vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize laureate and former diplomat who had lent his reputation to selling the West on the democratic goals of the military takeover.

Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei resigns from his post as Egypt’s interim vice president. [Photo: BBC]

“We have reached a state of harder polarization and more dangerous division, with the social fabric in danger of tearing, because violence only begets violence,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote in a public letter to the president. “The beneficiaries of what happened today are the preachers of violence and terrorism, the most extremist groups,” he said, “and you will remember what I am telling you.”

The violence was almost universally criticized by Western governments. A spokesman for President Obama said the United States was continuing to review the $1.5 billion in aid it gives Egypt annually, most of which goes to the military. The spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the violence “runs directly counter to pledges from the interim government to pursue reconciliation” with the Islamists.

He said the United States condemned the renewal of the emergency law and urged respect for basic rights like the freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstrations. But he stopped short of writing off the interim government, saying the United States would continue to remind Egypt’s leaders of their promises and urge them “to get back on track.”

International condemnation of the military-based operation continued unabated. In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an ally of Mr. Morsi, called for an early meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what he labeled a “massacre.”

In Paris, President François Hollande summoned the Egyptian ambassador to condemn the “bloody violence” and to “demand an end to the repression,” the presidency said in statement. Mr. Hollande said “everything must be done to avoid civil war,” the statement said.

Analysts said the attack was the clearest sign yet that the Egyptian police state was re-emerging in full force, overriding liberal cabinet officials like Mr. ElBaradei and ignoring Western diplomatic pressure and talk of cutting financial aid.

“This is the beginning of a systematic crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamists and other opponents of a military coup,” said Emad Shahin, a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.

“In the end,” he added, “the West will back the winning side.”

The attack Wednesday began about 7 a.m. when a circle of police officers began firing tear gas at the protest camps and obliterating tents with bulldozers. Although the Interior Ministry had said it would move only gradually and leave a safe exit, soon after the attack began several thousand people appeared trapped inside the main camp, near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. Snipers fired down on those trying to flee and riot police officers with tear gas and birdshot closed in from all sides.

“There is no safe passage,” said Mohamed Abdel Azeem, 25, a wholesaler, who had braved sniper fire to reach a field hospital.

For a time in the late afternoon, the Islamists succeeded in pushing the police back far enough to create an almost safe passage to a hospital building on the edge of what remained of their camp. Only a roughly 20-yard stretch in front of the hospital doors was still vulnerable to sniper fire from above, and a series of Islamist marchers from around the city flowed back into the encampment, bolstering its numbers.

But shortly before dusk, soldiers and police officers renewed their push, and the Islamists were forced at last to flee.

Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, 61, was killed by sniper fire near Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in northeast Cairo. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

Three journalists were reportedly killed in the fighting: a cameraman for Sky News, the Britain-based news network; a reporter for a newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates; and a reporter for an Egyptian state newspaper. Several others were arrested.

Egyptian state news media played down the violence, reporting that the police were clearing the camps “in a highly civilized way.” In a televised address, Mr. Ibrahim, interior minister under Mr. Morsi and now under the new government, said his forces “insisted on maintaining the highest degrees of self-restraint.”

Hazem El Bebawi

In a televised statement, Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister and a Western-trained economist who had been considered a liberal, cited the Islamists’ supposed stockpiling of weapons and ammunition to argue that the use of force was justified to protect the rights of other citizens.

Michael Wahid Hanna, a researcher on Egypt with the New York-based Century Foundation who was visiting Cairo, asked, “Is this closer to being resolved tonight than last night?”

“Obviously not. I don’t think anybody has thought this through fully.”

Source: New York Times / BBC NEWS