The violence erupted in Cairo yesterday, a day after the second phase of polls closed, when soldiers tried to disperse a sit-in by hundreds of protesters in front of the Cabinet building.
Egyptian troops today stormed the iconic Tahrir square which has been the epicentre of anti-military protests here, leaving at least eight people dead, including a top cleric and more than 300 injured in two days of post-election clashes.
The violence erupted in Cairo yesterday, a day after the second phase of polls closed, when soldiers tried to disperse a sit-in by hundreds of protesters in front of the Cabinet building, media reports said.
The renewed clashes today came after eight people were killed and more than 300 others injured. Soldiers also stormed an anti-military protest camp outside the parliament building, a short distance from Tahrir, Arab channel Al Jazeera reported.
Several tents in the Tahrir square that had been used by protesters had been also set alight in the the bloodiest violence in weeks that threatens to undermine the credibility of first Parliamentary polls in post-Mubarak era, the report said.
It said troops reportedly fired into the air as they pushed into the square, while thick black smoke filled the air following the eruption of a fire in the area around Egypt's upper house of parliament.
The demonstrators want an immediate handover to civilian rule in Egypt. They object to the appointment of Kamal Ganzuri as the new Egyptian Prime Minister last month by the ruling military.
Ganzuri, who first served as premier under Mubarak from 1996 to 1999, accused protesters of being counter-revolutionaries, a reference to the uprising in February that toppled President Mubarak.
"Those who are in Tahrir Square (epicentre of the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in February) are not the youth of the revolution," Ganzuri told a press conference.
"This is not a revolution, but a counter-revolution," he was quoted as saying by BBC.
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