Looters roam streets in Cairo, elsewhere

CAIRO, Egypt – Cairo residents boarded up homes and set up neighborhood watches of citizens armed with guns, clubs and knives Saturday as looting and violence engulfed the capital.

With the police having disappeared from the streets, the army expanded its presence of tanks and armored personnel carriers but mainly around government buildings. As dusk fell and the chaos continued, the military fanned out to neighborhoods across the city in a bid to quell the lawlessness.

“The army guards big institutions like the gardens and museum, not people and their property,” said Mighaz Sawzi, who lives in central Cairo. “God has to protect us, because who’s going to protect us now?”

Residents reported gangs of youths, some on motorbikes, roaming the streets, looting supermarkets, shopping malls and stores. Some of the gangs made it to affluent residential areas in the suburbs, breaking into luxury homes and apartments. The crackle of gunfire could be heard in the city center as well as outlying districts.

Looters made off with TV sets, electronics and furniture from a mall along the Nile. In Giza on the other side of the city, young men could be seen carting away bottles of alcohol, chairs, sofas and tables from casinos and nightclubs and packing them into their rickshaws.

Downtown, thieves broke into the Arab International Bank and several cafes and eateries, including a McDonald’s and a Hardees. The ruling party headquarters was plundered and torched, while a Carrefour supermarket in the south was also hit.

The looting, which has spread despite a 4 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew, prompted residents in some neighborhoods to establish vigilante groups to protect private property. These groups set up roadblocks at intersections to provide security.

Looters outside of Cairo were also taking advantage of the chaos.

On the highway from the capital to Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, car dealerships were broken into and looted. Banks could be seen abandoned, with papers fluttering out of their smashed windows.

Egyptian state television was running periodic updates throughout the night of areas where looters and criminals had operated – going street-by-street, district-by-district. It aired two numbers that residents could call and report disturbances in their neighborhoods. The report said that some of the citizen watch groups were calling for help from the military.