Reuters

CAIRO: Eleven people were killed in Cairo Wednesday, medics said, when armed men attacked protesters demanding an end to army rule, prompting several candidates to suspend presidential campaigns and heightening doubts on the transition to democracy.
 
Leaders from Islamist and secular camps blamed the trouble on hired “thugs” doing the bidding of entrenched interests behind military rule and warned the generals not to use it as a pretext to delay their departure; the army reaffirmed its stated commitment to handing power to civilians by July.
 
Unidentified men armed with guns and batons attacked demonstrators who included hundreds of ultraconservative Salafi Islamists protesting at their candidate’s exclusion from the ballot for a first-round presidential vote on May 23 and 24.
 
For hours after the dawn raid, the security forces seemed unable or unwilling to put an end to the violence. As fighting raged near the Defense Ministry in the Abbasiya district of central Cairo, Reuters reporters saw men carrying guns, even a sword, while protesters threw rocks, bottles and petrol bombs.
 
Only in the afternoon did riot police arrive in large numbers to break up the bloody melee and the clashes abated.
 
Democracy campaigners blasted the military rulers of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took over 15 months ago as veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak was brought down by mass street protests during the Arab Spring of uprisings.
 
“SCAF and the government unable to protect civilians or in cahoots with thugs. Egypt going down the drain,” tweeted Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning former U.N. official.
 
Members of the SCAF met representatives of political parties and repeated a pledge to hold elections on time. Politicians who were present said they even offered to return to barracks over a month before the July deadline – in the albeit unlikely event that one of the 13 first-round candidates wins outright in May.
 
Egypt’s military chief of staff said the army may transfer power to an elected president on May 24 if the vote is decided in the first round, state television reported. “We are looking into handing over power on May 24 if the president wins in the first round,” state television quoted chief of staff Sami Enan as saying.
 
The military had previously said it would transfer power by the end of June. The presidential election is scheduled for May 23 and 24 and a run off for June 16 and 17 if there is no outright winner in the first round.
 
But the Muslim Brotherhood refused to join talks with the generals, saying the violence showed the army was trying to “obstruct the handover of power.”
 
The Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi suspended campaigning for two days, saying they would be mourning the dead. Several political groups said they would call on followers to mass in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Friday.
 
“I think it will be the practical response to all of what is happening now, be it the blood being spilt or the foot-dragging in the defined date for handing over power,” said senior Brotherhood official Essam al-Erian.
 
The other leading Islamist candidate, Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, suspended campaigning indefinitely in protest at the way the authorities had handled the clashes, a spokesman said.
 
Abol Fotouh and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, the front-runner among those with past ties to Mubarak, are seen as the most likely candidates to contest a head-to-head runoff.
 
On Twitter, Abol Fotouh said he could not now take part in an unprecedented televised debate with Moussa planned for Thursday “when today our youths are drowning in their blood.”
 
The hosting TV channel also said the event was delayed.
 
Moussa said: “The number of dead and injured foreshadows a disaster and it is unacceptable for security agencies to stand and watch as clashes continue and blood is shed.”
 
Medical and judicial sources gave a toll of 11 dead and over 160 wounded. The Interior Ministry said seven had died.
 
Ahmad Shahir, 24, a pharmacology student working at a makeshift clinic set up the scene, said men he described as thugs fired shots at an encampment of protesters including supporters of Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, the Salafi cleric barred from the election, and members of pro-democracy youth movements.
 
Local residents joined in the attack on the protesters.
 
Among the protesters were hardcore football fans and diehard secular revolutionaries skilled in street combat who dashed back and forth across debris-scattered streets, hurling rocks.
 
Wounded men were hauled away and others filled bottles with gasoline to throw at their opponents. Shots rang out and a Reuters journalist saw at least one attacker wielding a sword.
 
“Where is the army? Why are they not stopping these people?” cried a bystander.
 
The army sent troops to the scene. But some armored vehicles then beat a retreat when protesters attacked an officer who was taking video footage. Riot police later arrived in larger numbers and separated the two sides. The violence subsided by the afternoon.
 
In other developments, an Egyptian parliamentary delegation including top Muslim Brotherhood figures will head to Saudi Arabia seeking to resolve the worst in crisis in decades between states that were close allies under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak. The speakers of the upper and lower house of parliament, both senior members of the Brotherhood, will be in the delegation that the state news agency said would meet the Saudi king Thursday over the crisis triggered by Riyadh’s arrest of an Egyptian lawyer and a wave of protests that it generated.