Egypt's Continuing Revolution: Month 14, Week 4, Day 1.

On Thursday (15/8/13) evening Egypt's security forces moved into secure the Iman Mosque where the Muslim Brotherhood had been storing the majority of the bodies they claim had been killed during Wednesday's (14/8/13) clearance of the Brotherhoods camps. The purpose of this was to make sure that the dead could be passed on to the Ministry of Health so they could be counted and properly stored until they are claimed by relatives. Security forces also recovered a number of bodies that had been buried at the Rabea al-Adaweya Mosque camp. These new discoveries bring the total killed nationally on Wednesday to 638 although because the bodies had been moved it is impossible to tell exactly when and where they died. However a significant number of the 113 corpses had been burned beyond recognition suggesting that they died after fire engulfed the Rabea al-Adaweya camp. To me this really begs the question of what the Brotherhood thought what they were playing at when they started throwing petrol bombs around in what was effectively a tent city.

Also on Thursday night the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) met in a special closed door session to discuss events in Egypt on Wednesday. This was actually a very short meeting with only time for the UNSC members to be briefed on events by UNSC staffers and add any information they had gathered themselves before agreeing to release a short and bland statement that deplored the violence and called on all parties to avoid a repeat. Although it was a closed door session I suspect the main loser of the meeting was Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan who rather hysterically demanded the UNSC meet. This demand was driven mainly by the fact Erdogan had built the majority of his future political plans around there being a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and is now very worried that the Turkish people backed by the Turkish military may follow Egypt's example and kick him and his Islamist policies out of office. Today France and Germany have successfully called for a European Union (EU) meeting to discuss Egypt. However this meeting is not likely to take place until the scheduled EU security summit on September 6/7th. Its main purpose seems to be to make sure that all EU member states get a say in how the EU reacts to the situation. That's because in times of crisis the office of the EU Commissioner for Foreign Affairs headed by British Baroness Ashdown can act with such a level of autonomy its position can be utterly removed from the views of the EU member states.

Today the Muslim Brotherhood have once again tried to paralyse Egypt by calling on people to march from every Mosque in the nation as part of a "Day of Anger and Rage." Primarily this served to demonstrate that being unable to concentrate their supporters in a very small area of Cairo the Muslim Brotherhood and their views actually represent a tiny minority of the Egyptian population. Small marches took place in Alexandria, Ismalia and Tanta in Gharbeya province but these were quickly and violently attacked by local residents. The security forces rather sensibly decided not to get involved in this instead opting to defend Coptic Churches and government buildings. Although the totals are still being totted up it appears that 25 people have been killed in clashes outside of the capital Cairo.

Cairo is of course where the Brotherhood focused the main part of their efforts with several marches taking place across the city all set to converge on Ramsis Square. Being well prepared the security forces actually did a very good job of stopping and containing these various marches at different parts of the city in order to prevent them forming one big march in Ramsis Square. The main trouble flared when two of the marches were stopped on the May 15th and October 6th bridges. On both of those bridges Brotherhood supporters were armed with assault rifles that they used to shoot passers-by, shoot at the security forces in order to provoke them into firing into the crowd or simply firing into the crowd themselves. As a result battles raged at the Ramsis Square side of both bridges leaving a confirmed 35 dead so far. However if you listen to the Muslim Brotherhood's version of events entirely peaceful protesters were gathered in Ramsis Square when military helicopter gunships flew over head strafing the crowd with machine gun fire killing hundreds.

Egypt is currently around two and half hours into a overnight curfew. My advice is for people to respect that curfew because the security forces will be strictly enforcing it to make sure that the violence ends for the day without the Brotherhood being able to set up a new camp in Cairo. Unfortunately the Brotherhood have called for an entire week of protest. However based on the numbers they brought to the streets today I don't see them being able to sustain that.

19:30 on 16/8/13.