Egypt: 15 Killed in Vendors Fight, Political Deadlock Continues

Local Editor

At least 15 people were killed on Monday night in a brawl between Cairo street vendors and a shopkeeper, including 13 in a fire.
A security source clarified that two people died of gunshot and stab wounds in an initial brawl in central Cairo, and 13 more were killed after the shop they took refuge in was set on fire.

The source said the fight started "over an old disagreement on vendor spaces."
In parallel, witnesses stated that the fight began after a cosmetics store owner asked merchants selling fireworks outside his shop to move away.

When they refused he attacked them, opening fire with a machine gun, they said, adding that the vendors then launched lit fireworks into his shop, setting it ablaze.
Security forces and firefighters moved into the area in the wake of the fight and put out the fire.
They discovered the 13 bodies of people killed in the blaze and arrested several people, the source added.

A firefighter at the scene said "most of those killed in the fire suffocated to death."
On the political level, Europe's top diplomat pressed Egypt's rulers Monday to step back from a growing confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed President Mohammad Mursi.
Ashton, on her second trip to Egypt since Mursi's fall, met General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the army and the man behind the overthrow of Egypt's first freely elected president.

She also held talks with deputy interim president and prominent politician Mohamed al-Baradei and interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy.

There were no immediate details on the talks. Earlier, Ashton said she would press for a "fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood."

In comments carried by the MENA state news agency, al-Baradei said he had told Ashton the new leadership was doing all in its power to "reach a peaceful way out of the current crisis, that preserves the blood of all Egyptians."
Ashton was also meeting members of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political wing. Thousands of its supporters have camped out for a month at the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in northern Cairo, demanding Mursi's reinstatement and defying threats by the army-backed authorities to remove them.
"It's very simple, we are not going anywhere," Brotherhood spokesman Gehad al-Haddad said before the meeting with Ashton. "We are going to increase the protest and multiply the sit-ins," he told Reuters. "Someone has to put sense into this leadership."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team