PRO-MORSI STUDENTS STAGE PROTESTS AT AZHAR UNIVERSITY

      Cairo, 15 Dhul Hijja 1434/20 October 2013 (MINA) – Scores of students staged protests on the first day of study at Al-Azhar University on Saturday to denounce what they call the “military coup” against elected president Mohamed Morsi.

    Chanting anti-military slogans, students flashed the now-iconic bright yellow ‘Rabaa’ sign in solidarity with hundreds of pro-Morsi demonstrators killed in the violent dispersal of pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo in mid-August, Anadolu Agency quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

    Female students also organized a march from the premises of the Islamic Studies Faculty and toured the campus, chanting similar slogans.

     An official university source said that around 50 percent of registered students only showed up on the first day of study on Saturday.

     The university’s students’ union had earlier said that it would stage protests on campus against the July military ouster of Morsi.

     The union, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, said that more than 100 university students had died in pro-democracy protests in addition to the detention of more than 120 students.

       Study at Al-Azhar University has been postponed for two weeks for what the university administration described as “unfinished” maintenance work.

      But student sources said that the move was taken for “security reasons”, given the fact that most students supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties. (T/P09/E1).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).