many dramatic photos from Port Said

The Daily Mail did a fine job this time. HERE.

They also did some good spot interviewing:

“The final whistle prompted more than 13,000 home fans, armed with knives, iron bars and machetes, to storm the pitch and attack rival players and their 1,200 supporters.

Al-Ahly goalkeeper Sharif Ikrami, who was injured in the clashes and said the entire team had now quit football, said dead bodies were carried past him in the changing room.

He said: ‘There were people dying in front of us. It’s over. We’ve all made a decision that we won’t play soccer any more. We can’t think about it.’

Pure hooliganism, and a bitter long-standing rivalry of clashes between the two sets of fans, was initially blamed for the worst football riot in Egyptian history. But speculation is now mounting that the riot was orchestrated by pro-Mubarak forces in revenge against Al Ahly’s ultra fans.”

Speculation is “mounting,” indeed:

“Albadry Farghali, a member of parliament for Port Said, screamed in a telephone call to live television: ‘The security forces did this or allowed it to happen.

‘The men of Mubarak are still ruling. The head of the regime has fallen but all his men are still in their positions.’

Former Al-Ahly player Hani Seddik told the BBC: ‘I don’t think this is about football. These trouble-makers were not football fans.

‘How were they allowed to carry knives into the ground? To me, this is the actions of people who do not want the country to be stable and want to put off tourists from coming here.’

Abdullah el-Said, a 43-year-old driver in Port Said, said: ‘All that happened is not for the sake of a game. It’s political. It was orchestrated by the military council to target the Ultras.

‘The military council wanted to crush the ultras because they sided with protesters ever since the revolution began.'”

Ahly fans are met by supporters at the train station in Cairo last night after their return from Port Said:

A man reads the Qur’an next to the body of his brother in the Port Said morgue: