CAIRO
An alliance backing ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi on Thursday called for staging a fresh series of protests next week in support of the Palestinian resistance against Israel and also in preparation for the first anniversary of the bloody dispersal of two pro-Morsi protest camps.
"Maintain your revolutionary action with strength and determination under the slogan 'Resistance is the Hope of the Nation'," the National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy, made up of Islamist parties and figures, said.
"By doing so, you will be building up for the uprising of revenge on the anniversary of the massacre," it added in a statement, referring to the hundreds of Morsi backers who were killed on August 14 last year when the authorities violently dispersed their two major sit-ins in Cairo and Giza.
The dispersal of the eastern Cairo Rabaa al-Adawiya Square has particularly continued to linger in the country's memory, with Human Rights Watch describing it as the "worst mass unlawful killings in the country's modern history."
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, was ousted by the army last year – and later imprisoned on a raft of criminal charges – following massive demonstrations against his presidency.
The alliance also asked its followers to pay tribute to the resistance of the people of the Gaza Strip against Israel's war against the Palestinian territory.
A month-long Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip had left at least 1886 people dead and more than 9800 others injured. Thousands of homes and facilities were also destroyed by the Israeli attacks.
By Islam Mosaad
www.aa.com.tr/en
