Port Said Stadium turned to be a scene of a massacre when fans of Al-Masry invaded the pitch celebrating the team’s home win over Al-Ahly because of a “provocative banner”

Pictures taken from Reuters

Port Said Stadium turned to be a scene of a massacre when fans of Al-Masry, a team based in Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, invaded the pitch celebrating the team’s home win over Al-Ahly, the Cairo-based club, because of a “provocative banner” something that was blamed on “foreign hand.”

Amid an almost total absence of police, players fled to their changing rooms after a match which ended with (3-1) for Al-Masry. There were wildly different estimates of casualties, but doctors said they believed 74 were dead and at least 1,000 people were injured prompting fans and politicians on Thursday to turn on the ruling army for failing to prevent the deadly incident.

Angry politicians denounced the lack of security at the match and blamed military leaders for allowing, or even causing, the tragedy which was believed to be a telling sign of the lack of security in Egypt following last year’s revolution.

Muslim Brotherhood accused an “invisible” foreign hand behind this “unjustified” massacre. “The authorities have been negligent. We fear that some officers are punishing the people for their revolution and for depriving them of their ability to act as tyrants and restricting their privileges,” the group said in a statement.

Ahly players said that police and armed forces were nowhere to be seen during or after the clashes and rumors were that the al-Masry fans were allegedly preventing the ambulances from entering the stadium for an hour and half, as reported by some Egyptian dailies.

“Down with military rule,” thousands of Egyptians chanted at the main Cairo train station where they met injured fans returning from the bloody scene. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state television building and marches across the capital were planned.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who is Egypt's military ruler, sent two military planes to Port Said to fly out the players and the injured, state television reported. He stressed that the country's security "is fine" as he waited at an airport in east Cairo to meet the players and wounded fans.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter was “very shocked and saddened to learn that a large number of football supporters have died or been injured” describing it as a black day for football. “Such a catastrophic situation is unimaginable and should not happen,” he said.
  
Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzuri was to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on Thursday to discuss the events. Politicians in Cairo expressed fury at the deaths.