15 Die in Security Police Mutiny, Cairo Gets Curfew

Egyptian authorities clamped Cairo under indefinite curfew today and ordered troops onto the streets to quell a bloody mutiny by thousands of security police, begun as rumors spread that their three-year conscription period was being extended by a year.

Fifteen civilians were killed and more than 300 people were wounded in the nightlong rampage of looting and arson near the Great Pyramids that spread to the city, police sources said.

Some luxury hotels were set ablaze, but no tourists were reported injured.

An Interior Ministry official said many rioters had been arrested but gave no numbers.

64 Civilians Hurt

The police sources said 64 civilians were among the wounded and at least 300 men were taken to a military hospital.

Police also said the rioters stormed Torah prison, one of Cairo’s biggest jails, and freed most of the convicts. They refused to say how many were released.

The mutiny began late Tuesday in the suburb of Maadi, where many foreign diplomats live, and was taken up by civilians in Cairo and at least three other cities.

President Hosni Mubarak called an emergency Cabinet meeting and said in a statement to the nation that the rioters killed some guards around hotels, shops and nightclubs in Cairo. He did not say how many were killed and made no mention of casualties in other cities.

Hundreds of tourists were being evacuated to downtown from hotels near the pyramids. The riots left apartment buildings and two luxury hotels near the pyramids gutted and another badly damaged by fire, with hundreds of cars wrecked and a trail of damage around the city.

Streets Largely Deserted

Late today, soldiers in tanks and armored personnel carriers patrolled the largely deserted streets of this normally bustling city of 12 million. State-controlled Cairo Radio announced an indefinite curfew.

The rioting began when conscripts from a Central Security Force camp near the pyramids rioted to protest “false rumors” that their term of service was to be extended from three years to four, the official Middle East News Agency said.

Mubarak, facing the most serious domestic unrest since coming to power in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, read his statement on national television.

He blamed the violence on a “deviationist minority” within the security force and said, “This is a treacherous blow to the march of this people struggling for its livelihood and its future.”