Dozens killed in Cairo after gunmen open fire on pro-Morsi protesters

At least 34 people have been killed in an attack outside the headquarters of the Republican Guard in Cairo, an Egyptian health ministry official says.

Khaled el-Khatib said initial reports indicated 34 people were killed and 300 wounded in shooting outside the building in the early hours of Monday. Earlier, Egyptian military officials had said gunmen killed at least five supporters of the former president and one officer died when people tried to storm the building.

The Muslim Brotherhood said shots were fired at supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi near the headquarters, where Morsi is being held. The Egyptian military said “a terrorist group” had tried to storm the building.

Murad Ali of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party said shooting broke out in the early morning while Islamists staged a sit-in outside the Republican Guard barracks.

Al-Jazeera’s Egypt news channel broadcast footage of what appeared to be five men killed in the violence, and medics trying to resuscitate an unconscious man at a makeshift clinic at a nearby pro-Morsi sit-in. Ambulances were shown driving to and from the clinic.

The military overthrew Morsi last Wednesday after mass nationwide demonstrations led by youth activists demanding his resignation. The Brotherhood denounced the intervention as a coup and vowed peaceful resistance against the “usurper authorities”.

The ultra-conservative Islamist AL-Nour party, which backed the military action, said it had withdrawn from negotiations to form a new interim government in protest at what it called the “massacre of the Republican Guard”.

“We’ve announced our withdrawal from all tracks of negotiations as a first response,” Nader Bakar, spokesman for Egypt’s second biggest Islamist party, said on Facebook.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/protesters-massacred-cairo-egypt-claims