Egypt Soccer Riot: Death Toll Climbs As Police Set Off Tear Gas

Police in Cairo fired salvos of tear gas and birdshot Friday at rock-throwing protesters as popular anger over a deadly soccer riot spilled over into a second day of street violence that left three people dead and more than 1,500 injured, doctors and health officials said.

The protesters blame the police for failing to prevent the melee after a soccer match in the Mediterranean city of Port Said on Wednesday killed 74 people. The violence – the soccer world's worst in 15 years – has fueled anger at Egypt's ruling military generals and the already widely distrusted police force.

Demonstrators in Cairo, the city of Suez and several Nile Delta cities on Friday turned their anger on the military, calling for it to surrender power because of what they say is the ruling generals' mismanagement of the country's transition to democracy.

In the capital, protesters in helmets and gas masks hurled stones at riot police firing tear gas outside the Interior Ministry, which controls the police. The demonstrators say they don't want to storm the ministry, but to hold a sit-in in front of it to protest the soccer deaths.

"I came down because what happened in Port Said was a political plan from the military to say it's either them or chaos," said 19-year-old Islam Muharram.

Many protesters have suggested the authorities either instigated the Port Said violence or intentionally allowed it to happen to retaliate for the key role soccer fans known as Ultras had in clashes with security forces during the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

The Cairo violence began late Thursday and escalated overnight, with protesters pushing through the barricades erected around the fortress-like ministry building and bringing down a wall of concrete blocks erected outside the ministry two months ago, after similar violence left more than 40 protesters dead.

Ambulances and volunteers on motorcycles ferried the injured, most of them suffering respiratory problems from the tear gas, to field hospitals set up nearby on Tahrir Square.