(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/130309_egyptsoccerriotfire.photoblog600.jpg)Mohammed Asad / APAn injured security official is carried from a police officers club in an upscale Cairo neighborhood, after fires were set by protesters angry about death sentences imposed on soccer fans over a deadly riot.Violent protests broke out in Egypt Saturday over death sentences imposed following a deadly soccer riot.
The sentences were first handed down on the fans in January for their role in a stadium riot which killed more than 70 people in Port Said last year. On Saturday, a court confirmed 21 soccer fans would be executed.
Protesters in Port Said untied moored speedboats used to supply shipping on the Suez Canal, apparently hoping the boats would drift into the waterway and disrupt passing vessels, witnesses said.
About 2,000 protesters also blocked car ferries from crossing the canal. Military police recovered five of the speedboats and brought them back to shore, but two were still drifting, one witness told Reuters.
In Cairo, soccer fans set fire to a police social club, sending plumes of smoke rising over the capital.
In an apparently unrelated move, Egypt's Interior Ministry raised a state of emergency in the Sinai peninsula on Saturday.
The ministry said it had intelligence that jihadists might attack police there, state news agency MENA reported.
"The Minister of Interior has raised the level of emergency in North and South Sinai after receiving information that jihadist groups intend to attack police buildings there," Interior Ministry official General Osama Ismail said, according to MENA.
Port Said, at the northern entrance to the canal, has suffered frequent eruptions of violence since the death sentences.
However, until now they had declared the Canal, a major artery for global shipping, off limits for the protests apart from one occasion, when red balloons marked "SOS" were floated into the waterway. The Suez Canal is a major local employer.
Reuters
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