Death toll rises to 26 in Aswan tribal clashes

Citing hospital sources, the state-owned Middle East News Agency said on Tuesday that 26 have died from tribal clashes in Aswan.

The increased death toll comes amid the prosecutor general’s inspection visit and official mediation efforts to maintain a truce between two feuding clans in the southern Egyptian city.

The latest fatality is Shazly Shahat Khalil, a 22 year-old male, who is reported to have suffered from burns covering 90 percent of his body.

A localized telecommunications outage affecting phone and Internet services was reported during Prosecutor General Hesham Barakat’s visit to Aswan, but several news outlets said they resumed shortly after he left.

Quoting Hesham al-Alaiyli, chief of the governmental Telecommunications Regulation Authority, privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the outage was due to “a severed communications cable” north of the city. On social media sites, however, a number of Aswan’s residents claimed that communications were deliberately cut-off due to governmental security concerns.

Accompanied by Aswan’s governor and a host of top brass security officers, Barakat inspected properties damaged during the bloody clashes, which erupted on Friday and dragged-on into Sunday.

Barakat was also sent to Aswan to follow-up on the prosecution of detained members of both feuding clans.

As of Monday, a locally mediated truce seems to be in effect between the two fighting parties.

The clashes broke out in eastern Aswan between the Hilail clan and the Nubian Dabodeya clan. As well as 26 fatalities, tens of others were injured, properties were destroyed, and a number of arrests were made from both clans.

Military sources and state-owned media outlets have attempted to portray the clashes as being stoked by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. This accusation has been dismissed by both local sources and independent media outlets, who attribute the bloodshed to other causes, including graffiti on a wall deemed to be offensive, and a minor scuffle amongst students outside a local school.

Official investigations are still being conducted into the exact reasons for the fatal clashes.