At least 25 Egyptian football fans were killed on Sunday evening after policemen fired teargas and shotgun pellets on supporters queueing to enter a Cairo stadium, according to figures reported by state media, in the latest spasm of state-led violence that has characterised much of Egypt’s post-revolutionary history.
Survivors claimed that police fired on ticket-holding fans from Zamalek SC, Egypt’s second-biggest club, as they tried to enter the Air Defence Stadium, a military-owned stadium in eastern Cairo, to watch a league game. But the interior ministry, which governs the police, said they had begun firing after ticketless fans tried to break in.
“They tried to break the stadium gates by force, which forced security to stop them from continuing to do this,” the ministry said in a statement that claimed that the deaths were “because of the stampede”.
Whatever the truth, the incident is the latest in at least a dozen mass killings since the 2011 revolution and at least the third to be connected to football. More than 70 fans died in a massacre in 2012, when supporters from Al Ahly SC were killed in a riot in Port Said stadium. Authorities blamed those deaths on fans from a rival club but Ahly’s followers believed they were targeted because of the role their hardcore support-base played in both the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and subsequent demonstrations.
Zamalek’s fans have also had a somewhat politicised role, after locking horns in recent months with their club chairman, Mortada Mansour, a counter-revolutionary lawyer who makes no secret of his contempt for both revolutionaries and Zamalek’s ultras.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s deaths eyewitnesses said the police’s attack was an unprovoked assault on people who carried tickets. Amr, a musician who survived a shotgun pellet to his chest, said that around 1,000 fans had become trapped in a narrow pathway leading to the stadium gates shortly after 4pm. Many of them had held up their tickets, including himself.
“We stayed there for a very long time and people started to injure themselves on the barbed wire,” he said. “We were stuck inside and people started moving and shouting. So the [police] thought we were trying to make problems, so they fired a teargas canister.”
By Amr’s account, one fan fired back a firework, which was met with more teargas in return – and then a stampede started, which the police met with gunfire. “After that people started to run in every direction, they didn’t know where to go, it was a very chaotic situation and they didn’t stop shooting during all this time.”
Fans responded with more fireworks and stones. Later, when the Zamalek team’s bus arrived in a police convoy, people tried to prevent the bus from entering the area, and attacked a nearby police car, sparking another round of clashes.
In Egypt the deaths have sparked another debate about police tactics and about the logic of opening up football matches, a frequent flashpoint, to fans. For much of the past four years they have been played behind closed doors.
“I’m wondering in the first place, why barbed wire, why gas and why fireworks?” asked Amr. “Why are you responding to fireworks with live ammunition?”
Survivors claimed that police fired on ticket-holding fans from Zamalek SC, Egypt’s second-biggest club, as they tried to enter the Air Defence Stadium, a military-owned stadium in eastern Cairo, to watch a league game. But the interior ministry, which governs the police, said they had begun firing after ticketless fans tried to break in.
“They tried to break the stadium gates by force, which forced security to stop them from continuing to do this,” the ministry said in a statement that claimed that the deaths were “because of the stampede”.
Whatever the truth, the incident is the latest in at least a dozen mass killings since the 2011 revolution and at least the third to be connected to football. More than 70 fans died in a massacre in 2012, when supporters from Al Ahly SC were killed in a riot in Port Said stadium. Authorities blamed those deaths on fans from a rival club but Ahly’s followers believed they were targeted because of the role their hardcore support-base played in both the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and subsequent demonstrations.
Zamalek’s fans have also had a somewhat politicised role, after locking horns in recent months with their club chairman, Mortada Mansour, a counter-revolutionary lawyer who makes no secret of his contempt for both revolutionaries and Zamalek’s ultras.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s deaths eyewitnesses said the police’s attack was an unprovoked assault on people who carried tickets. Amr, a musician who survived a shotgun pellet to his chest, said that around 1,000 fans had become trapped in a narrow pathway leading to the stadium gates shortly after 4pm. Many of them had held up their tickets, including himself.
“We stayed there for a very long time and people started to injure themselves on the barbed wire,” he said. “We were stuck inside and people started moving and shouting. So the [police] thought we were trying to make problems, so they fired a teargas canister.”
By Amr’s account, one fan fired back a firework, which was met with more teargas in return – and then a stampede started, which the police met with gunfire. “After that people started to run in every direction, they didn’t know where to go, it was a very chaotic situation and they didn’t stop shooting during all this time.”
Fans responded with more fireworks and stones. Later, when the Zamalek team’s bus arrived in a police convoy, people tried to prevent the bus from entering the area, and attacked a nearby police car, sparking another round of clashes.
In Egypt the deaths have sparked another debate about police tactics and about the logic of opening up football matches, a frequent flashpoint, to fans. For much of the past four years they have been played behind closed doors.
“I’m wondering in the first place, why barbed wire, why gas and why fireworks?” asked Amr. “Why are you responding to fireworks with live ammunition?”
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