Egypt's Continuing Revolution: Month 14, Week 3, Day 7.

With the overnight curfew ending Egyptians have today started the grim task of beginning to assess the damage of yesterday's violence. Sadly a large part of this involves holding funerals and totting up the death toll. An unfortunate feature of previous outbreaks of violence has been that it can often take several days for all the bodies to be recovered and therefore registered with the Ministry of Health. On this occasion the task is being made much more difficult by the Muslim Brotherhood who are hiding corpses in Mosques and sports halls in order to avoid having their massively inflated death toll of some 2000+ independently verified.

However as of 11:00 (GMT) the Ministry of Health puts the death toll at 525. Of those deaths 57 occurred in the area surrounding the Al-Nahda camp and 137 occurred in the area surrounding the camp at the Rabea al-Adaweya Mosque. Of those those 194 deaths 43 were police officers and soldiers who had been shot, beaten to death or lynched. The majority of the 151 civilians who were killed had not suffered gunshot wounds and instead were killed by flying debris or burned in fires started accidentally by exploding cooking stoves, electricity generators or deliberately by Brotherhood supporters setting fire to barricades or throwing petrol bombs.

The overwhelming majority (331) of those killed yesterday died not as the military moved into clear the camps but as Brotherhood supporters ran riot across the country in revenge for the military clearing the camps. A prime example of this occurred at a gun shop just off Gamat El-Dowel in the Cairo suburb of Giza. During the height of yesterdays violence Brotherhood supporters attempted to break into the shop in order to steal guns and ammunition. When they were prevented from doing so by the shops security shutters they attacked the building with petrol bombs setting fire to several cars on the street in the process. Eventually they were able to burn their way into the shop but were unable to reach any of the guns which were secured in a strong room. The fire did though succeed in causing hundreds of rounds of ammunition to self-discharge peppering surrounding buildings and passers-by with birdshot and bullets.

Therefore it is clear to me that the military's failure yesterday was not that they used excessive force to clear the camps but that they failed to put in place a plan to contain the violence that was perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Today the Muslim Brotherhood show no sign of stopping that violence with their supporters again running riot in Egypt's second city Alexandria. In Cairo Brotherhood supporters attacked and set fire to the Governate building before attacking firefighters sent to deal with the blaze.

The Brotherhoods anger does not seem to be caused by yesterday's bloodshed - in fact from the way they're inviting the worlds media in to view the corpses at the Iman Mosque they seem rather proud of it. Instead the Brotherhoods anger comes from the fact they know that they have been defeated first politically and now on the streets and with the loss of their protest camps that they are no longer able to delay Egypt's return to democracy and hold the nation to ransom through street violence. This is also why both the European Union (EU) and the US have called on Egypt to end the state of emergency that is needed to stop the Brotherhood setting up new camps. In return for supplies of gas and oil the EU and the US have promised the Gulf states a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt so are attempting to use their influence to make that happen regardless of what the Egyptian people want.

15:50 on 15/8/13.