Egyptian Army Chief Warns of ‘Collapse of State’ Amid Chaos
The New York Times 
Mostafa El Shemy/Associated Press
Egyptian protesters burned a state security armored vehicle that demonstrators commandeered during clashes with security forces Monday night.
By KAREEM FAHIM, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MAYY EL SHEIKH
Published: January 29, 2013 8 Comments
CAIRO — Reacting to Egypt’s growing chaos, the head of the army warned on Tuesday of the “collapse of the state” if political forces in the country did not reconcile, reflecting growing impatience with the crisis from Egypt’s most powerful institution.
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Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
Egyptians opposed to President Mohamed Morsi on a seized armored police vehicle on Monday in Cairo. It was later set on fire.
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“The continuation of the conflict between different political forces and their disagreement on running the affairs of the country may lead to the collapse of the state and threatens the future of the coming generations,” said Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, who is also the defense minister, adding that “the attempt to affect the stability of the state institutions is a dangerous matter that harms Egyptian national security.”
His remarks, quoted on an official Army Facebook page, came as violence in Cairo began to escalate. During clashes between riot police and protesters along the Nile Corniche early on Tuesday, the fighting spilled into one of the city’s luxury hotels, leaving the lobby in ruins.
The worst of the turmoil, which has left at least 45 people dead, has been in Port Said at the northern tip of the Suez Canal. Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, has imposed a monthlong state of emergency in the city and two others in the Suez Canal zone, calling on the army to regain control of security.
General Sisi also said the army would protect the “vital” Suez Canal.
In Port Said on Monday, street battles reached a bloody new peak with a death toll over three days of at least 45, with at least five more protesters killed by bullet wounds, hospital officials said.
The state of emergency imposed by Mr. Morsi virtually eliminates due process protections against abuse by the police.
Angry crowds burned tires and hurled rocks at the police. And the police, with little training and less credibility, hunkered down behind barrages of tear gas, birdshot and occasional bullets.
The sense that the state was unraveling may have been strongest in Port Said, where demonstrators have proclaimed their city an independent nation. But in recent days, the unrest has risen in towns across the country and in Cairo as well. In the capital on Monday, a mob of protesters managed to steal an armored police vehicle, drive it to Tahrir Square and make it a bonfire.
After two years of torturous transition, Egyptians have watched with growing anxiety as the erosion of the public trust in the government and a persistent security vacuum have fostered a new temptation to resort to violence to resolve disputes, said Michael Hanna, a researcher at theCentury Foundation, based in New York, who is now in Cairo. “There is a clear political crisis that has eroded the moral authority of the state,” he said.
And the spectacular evaporation of the government’s authority here in Port Said has put that crisis on vivid display, most conspicuously in the rejection of Mr. Morsi’s declarations of the curfew and state of emergency.
As in Suez and Ismailia, tens of thousands of residents of Port Said poured into the streets in defiance just as a 9 p.m. curfew was set to begin. Bursts of gunfire echoed through the city for the next hours, and from 9 to 11 p.m. hospital officials raised the death count to seven from two.
When two armored personnel carriers approached a funeral Monday morning for some of the seven protesters killed the day before, a stone-throwing mob of thousands quickly chased them away. And within a few hours, the demonstrators had resumed their siege of a nearby police station, burning tires to create a smoke screen to hide behind amid tear gas and gunfire.
Many in the city said
