Cairo doctors struggle to treat Morsi supporters during bloody crackdown

• At least 278 dead as pro-Morsi camps stormed

• Bulldozers and live ammunition used in raids

• Doctor tells of 'barbaric' scenes at field hospital

Patrick Kingsley in Cairo

The Guardian, Wednesday 14 August 2013

 

"On a street leading to the besieged Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp, several doctors set up a makeshift ward on the pavement. Paving stones became pillows. Car covers became beds. Instead of medicine, all the doctors could offer were cartons of fruit juice bought en masse from a nearby kiosk. And all the while, rapid gunfire was heard hitting walls around the corner. The wounded were hurried over at a rate of one every minute.

"I've carried many people," said 18-year-old Muaaz Ashraf, a "sort-of atheist" who had turned up to help injured supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. "Some were dead. One was shot in the head. His skull was split open."

Ashraf, a university student, pointed to the grey and red stains that had dried on his shirt. "This is part of his brain."

The dead man was one of at least 95 Morsi supporters shot dead by military and police forces in Cairo on the bloodiest single day in Egypt since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Violence also broke out in other areas of the capital, and in the cities of Alexandria, Suez, and Assiut. At least 278 people died across the country.
It was the third mass killing of Morsi supporters at the hands of Egypt's security services since the army ousted him on 3 July – and the most deadly......"