"(Reuters) - First came the tear gas, the bulldozers and the flames. Then came the bullets and the blood.
Egypt's security forces arrived after dawn on Wednesday to disperse the camp where thousands of Islamists have held vigil for six weeks. Helicopters roared above. Police fired tear gas into the crowd. Armored bulldozers knocked down the makeshift walls made of sandbags and piles of rocks.
Inside, thousands of supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi were waking up into panic.
Reuters correspondent Yasmine Saleh reached the camp shortly after the assault began, to hear desperate residents reciting Koranic verse and screaming "God help us! God help us!"
Masked police in dark uniforms were pouring out of police vans with sticks in one hand and tear gas bombs in the other. They tore down tents and set others ablaze.
"They smashed through our walls. Police and soldiers, they fired tear gas at children. We are peaceful, no weapons, we didn't fire a shot, we threw stones. They continued to fire at protesters even when we begged them to stop," said Saleh Abdulaziz, 39, a secondary school teacher clutching a bleeding wound on his head.
After shooting began, wounded and dead lay on the streets near pools of blood. An area of the camp that had been a playground and art exhibit for the children of protesters was turned into a war-zone field hospital.
Seven dead bodies were lined up in the street, one of a teenager whose skull was smashed, with blood pouring from the back of his head.
At another location in Cairo, Reuters reporter Abdul Moneim Haikal was in a crowd of Mursi supporters when he heard bullets whizzing past and hitting walls.
The crowd dived to the ground for cover. When Haikal looked up he saw blood gushing from the skull of a man next to him, killed by a bullet to the head. Police were firing from armored vehicles across the street......"
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