Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has called for an “uprising” in the country and asked the “international community to stop the “massacres” in the aftermath of last week’s military coup.
Monday’s call follows the death of dozens of people in shootings at a sit-in protest in front of the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo. The Freedom and Justice Party, the religious group’s political arm, demanded “an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks”.
It urged “the international community and international groups and all the free people of the world to intervene to stop further massacres […] and prevent a new Syria in the Arab world.”
The Freedom and Justice Party had the highest number of seats at the parliament before the coup of last week.
‘Bloodbath’
Speaking to Al Jazeera in telephone interview on Monday morning, Gehad Haddad, a spokesman for Muslim Brotherhood, told Al Jazeera that there were two things “the bloodbath” happened overnight was trying to do.
“First is that we leave streets and forego the objective of bringing democracy in Egypt after 60 sixty years of military tyranny or they think that our blood is cheaper than any other’s blood in Egypt and no one would care,” he said.
“We are sticking to our ground, we will not be brought into a cycle of violence, we know how deadly that would be. Even if that means we will have to become the punching bag of the rest of society and our blood will flow for the rest of Egyptians to wake up and the rest of the world to understand that we are adamants of bringing democracy to our country.”
Mohamed Morsi was overthrown as the president in a coup in Egypt on Wednesday, a development that ignited mass protests organised by Muslim Brotherhood and other groups that supported him. Many people have been killed in shooting and clashes happening after the coup.
