The Lede Blog: Clashes in Cairo After Morsi Supporters Attack Palace Sit-In

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Last Updated, 1:58 p.m. Supporters of and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt engaged in street battles Wednesday night in Cairo, after Islamists attacked protesters camped outside the gates of the presidential palace, according to journalists and activists who witnessed the raid.

Morsi supporters reportedly attempted to stifle coverage by attacking journalists and bloggers, but activists from the Mosireen film collective managed to record video of tents being ripped down, which was quickly posted on YouTube.

Raw footage of an attack on a sit-in outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday posted on YouTube by Mosireen, a collective of activist filmmakers.

Egypt’s ON TV also broadcast video of the president’s supporters clearing the sit-in and putting up barriers to block the return of protesters to the area.

Video from Egypt’s ON TV showed Islamists driving away protesters camped outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday

Activists and journalists posted images on Twitter showing the president’s supporters dispersing the sit-in and taking control of the area outside the palace, with the apparent acquiescence of the police.

The attack on the sit-in came one day after tens of thousands of protesters rallied outside the gates of the palace to protest the president’s decree granting himself unchecked power to help push through a new constitution written by Islamists.

Before the attack, a message posted on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official @Ikhwanweb Twitter account called for a million-man counter-demonstration at the same location.

As several journalists noted, the Morsi supporters cleared the sit-in just as the vice president told reporters that the crisis could be resolved by allowing a referendum on the draft constitution to proceed and then passing amendments to the document after a new Parliament convenes.

While Muslim Brotherhood officials denied that they were responsible for the violence, claiming that “both sides” engaged in attacks, opposition activists blamed the Islamist president for the escalation and compared the use of force by civilian supporters of the Islamist movement to the tactics of the Mubarak regime and the way Iran’s government deploys members of the Basij militia to attack protesters there.

After the Morsi supporters cleared the small number of protesters who had camped outside the palace walls following Tuesday night’s protest, they moved on to erasing graffiti left by the revolutionaries, including a portrait of a young man named Jika Gaber who was killed at the start of the protests against the president’s decree.

As opposition protesters rallied nearby in response to the attack, activists reported that the president’s supporters remained on the offensive. Video streamed live from the scene to the video-sharing site Bambuser by the activist blogger Tarek Shalaby seemed to capture the sound of shots being fired.

After reports of at least one death and graphic images began to circulate online, the journalists Sharif Kouddous and Sarah Carr reported on clashes between supporters and opponents of the president from the front line between the two groups.

After the violence escalated, Brotherhood officials, including Essam el-Erian, a senior leader of the group’s political party, and the young, Islamist bloggers running the official Twitter account tried to blame opposition politicians, and were met with jeers from activists.

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