Egypt was on a state of alert on Saturday after protesters stormed the Israeli embassy, prompting the ambassador to flee, in the first attack of its kind since the two nations made peace 32 years ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the mob attack a “serious incident” and an unnamed official warned it was a “painful blow to peace” between Egypt and the Jewish state.
US President Barack Obama asked Egypt to protect the embassy housed in a high-rise building overlooking the Nile in Cairo’s Giza district as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe expressed concern over Egyptian-Israeli ties. The Israeli official said Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon, other staff and dependants had all left Egypt but a senior diplomat remained behind. “We left the deputy ambassador to keep up contact with the Egyptian government,” the official told AFP in Jerusalem on condition of anonymity.
He said six embassy staff were plucked to safety by Egyptian commandos. “It was a painful blow to the peace between us and a grave violation of diplomatic norms,” the official said. The embassy attack was the worst since Israel established its mission in Egypt after becoming the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979. Jordan followed suit in 1994. The violence is also the worst episode in tense relations since the killing of five Egyptian policemen last month on the border as Israel hunted militants after a deadly attack.
Three people were killed in the overnight clashes between police and protesters, hospital sources said, while the health ministry reported that one person died of a heart attack. More than 1,000 people, including some 300 policemen, were also injured in the clashes that erupted late on Friday and continued overnight, medical and security sources said. Police, meanwhile, arrested 19 people and referred them to the military prosecution which immediately began quizzing them, a security official said.
Protesters demolished a security wall around the mission with sledgehammers, removed the Israeli flag and entered the embassy, grabbing thousands of documents. They also torched police trucks and attacked regional police headquarters in the Giza district. Hundreds of soldiers backed by armoured cars rushed to the area after Obama called on Cairo to protect the embassy. Interior Minister Mansur al-Eissawy declared a state of high alert, cancelling all police leave, while Prime Minister Essam Sharaf called for an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday.
Quoting an “informed source,” government daily Al-Ahram reported on its website that “there is clear intention that the government will submit its resignation after its failure to contain” the violence. The attack came as about 1,000 protesters marched from Tahrir Square where thousands had massed Friday to press Egypt’s military rulers to keep promises of reform after a January-February revolt ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Israeli Defence Minister Minister Ehud Barak’s office said he called US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta to request help protecting their embassy. Obama spoke to Netanyahu by phone and expressed “great concern about the situation at the embassy, and the security of the Israelis serving there,” the White House said. Israeli public radio said the six rescued men were security officers, and Netanyahu’s office said they had returned home safe.
“When the violence got out of hand, some 80 (Israelis) were taken out” of Egypt, an Israeli official said. “All our people are safe and sound.” The area around the embassy was strewn with rocks and broken glass on Saturday from the overnight violence, an AFP reporter said. Some roads leading to the embassy and Giza police station remained blocked. Egyptian state television said that Levanon met a general of the ruling military’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before leaving Cairo, and that the ambassador appeared “anxious and even scared.”
