CAIRO/PORT SAID — Thousands of opponents of President Mohamed Morsi Friday returned to the streets of Egypt, demanding his overthrow after the deadliest violence of his seven months in power. Men in black shirts of mourning marched through the Suez Canal city of Port Said, scene of the worst bloodshed of the past 9 days, chanting and shaking fists. “There is no god but God and Mohamed Morsi is the enemy of God,” they chanted. Holding aloft portraits of those killed in the latest violence, they shouted: “We will die like they did, to get justice!” Protests marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak have killed nearly 60 people since Jan. 25, prompting the head of the army to warn this week that the state was on the verge of collapse. For the Port Said marchers, Friday was also the first anniversary of a soccer stadium riot that killed 70 people last year. Death sentences handed down Saturday against 21 Port Said people over the riots fueled the past week's violence there, which saw dozens shot dead in clashes with police. Protesters also marched in Alexandria, Ismailia and the capital Cairo, where they were headed toward the presidential palace. Morsi supporters have clashed with protesters at the palace in the past, although the Brotherhood has kept its men off the streets in recent days. The protesters accuse Morsi of betraying the spirit of the revolution by concentrating too much power in his own hands and those of his Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood accuses the opposition of trying to overthrow the first democratically elected leader. Friday's marches took place despite an intervention by Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, head of the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar university and mosque, who hauled in rival political leaders for crisis talksThursday and persuaded them to sign a charter disavowing violence. Anti-Morsi politicians said that pact did not require them to call off demonstrations. “We brought down the Mubarak regime with a peaceful revolution and are determined to realize the same goals in the same way, regardless of the sacrifices or the barbaric oppression,” tweeted Mohamed ElBaradei, a former head of the UN nuclear watchdog who has become a secularist leader. At Tahrir Square, hundreds of protesters gathered in the rain as vendors sold flag bracelets, pharaonic statues, sunflower seeds and water. A man with a microphone shouted to a crowd of a few hundred, calling for Morsi to be put on trial. “We came here to get rid of Morsi,” said furniture dealer Mohammed Al-Nourashi, 57. “He's only a president for the Brotherhood.” As he spoke, a crowd gathered. “Why is Obama supporting Morsi and the Brotherhood? Why?” a man shouted, challenging the US president's policy in Egypt. Osama Mohammed, 24, selling fruit from a battered wooden cart, said he graduated with a degree in commerce in 2007, but hadn't been able to find work — the sort of economic problems that caused the 2011 uprising and have only gotten worse since. He was not on the square for politics, just business. “I've come every Friday because there's traffic,” he said. “If the protests stay peaceful, it's no problem.”— Reuters
