CAIRO (AA) - When the attackers started to hit supporters of President Mohammad Morsi in the crowded partly commercial, partly educational neighborhood of Bayn Al Sarayat, Giza, Sherif Ibrahim, a 29-year-old accountant from Cairo, sought refuge, but this did not make him immune.
"I hid behind a steel barrier, but they showered us with rocks that few of us managed to escape," Ibrahim, one of many Islamists who staged a sit-in outside Egypt's Cairo University in Giza Governorate in support of President Mohamed Morsi, told Anadolu Agency.
"It was a horrible night. What made it worse was that the attackers were getting support from state institutions."
Hamdy Mahmoud, a Health Ministry media spokesman, told AA that 17 people died in the clashes around Cairo University yesterday and 366 people were injured.
Morsi loyalists say as many as 200 people attacked their peaceful assembly on Tuesday evening, claiming the attackers got protection from policemen who helped by firing teargas and shots against them.
"Policemen should be neutral in situations like this," said Osama Abbas, one of Morsi's supporters outside Cairo University.
"What we saw yesterday, however, says something else."
The Interior Ministry said in a statement today that it would do its best to offer protection to the people, adding it was working in tandem with the military to protect the people against what it called "law breakers".
The statement infuriated Morsi's supporters.
"Aren't we part of the people the ministry should protect?" Ibrahim fumed.
-Bloody Scenes-
When attacks against the demonstrators intensified, Ibrahim, like many other protesters, pelted the attackers back with stones and glasses.
He saw people dying, others receiving serious injuries in the heads, the hands and the stomach.
He himself had sustained an injury in the arm.
Behind and around him, the ground was littered with broken tiles, glasses and stones.
A stain of blood made itself visible to passersby in the middle of the street to tell of the bloody night he and other Morsi supporters had experienced.
Several cars were turned upside down.
Some of them were totally burned. Others sustained huge damage, bespeaking the intensity of the fight between the President's supporters and the residents of the neighborhood.
A few meters away from where the loyalists sought hiding from the scorching sun, residents of Bayn Al Sarayat formed groups of vigilantes and searched passersby.
They stopped passing cars and searching for any arms or explosives.
Some of the neighborhood residents insist that armed Morsi supporters had attacked their houses unprovoked.
"Some of them had machine guns," claimed Sameh Hamed, 31-year-old resident.
"They were shooting at everybody they saw on the way."
Sameh received a gun shot in the left side, but luckily the bullet did not stay inside his body.
Several shops were totally destroyed and house facades were damaged.
Some of the fired bullets made their marks on the walls of the buildings and stood as a grim reminder of the taste of infighting.
"That was a horrible night," said Mohamed Akram, another resident of the area.
"I could not sleep the whole day yesterday. I saw death with my bear eyes."
By Amr Emam – Anadolu Agency in Cairo
