Egypt imposes state of emergency after 95 people killed

CAIRO (Reuters) - At least 95 Egyptians were killed on Wednesday after security forces moved in on protesters demanding the reinstatement of President Mohamed Mursi, and the government imposed a state of emergency as unrest swept the most populous Arab nation.

Troops opened fire on demonstrators in violence that brought chaos to areas of the capital and looked certain to further polarize Egypt's 84 million people between those who backed Mursi and the millions who opposed his brief rule.

The state of emergency, starting at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, was to last a month.

In the streets around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northeast Cairo, where thousands of Mursi supporters have staged a sit-in for the last six weeks, riot police wearing gas masks crouched behind armored vehicles, tear gas hung in the air and burning tires sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.

At a hospital morgue nearby, a Reuters reporter counted 29 bodies, including that of a 12-year-old boy. Most had died of gunshot wounds to the head. A nurse at the same hospital had said she counted 60 bodies, and expected the number to rise.

The unrest spread beyond the capital, with the cities of Minya and Assiut, and Alexandria on the northern coast, also affected. Seventeen people were killed in the province of Fayoum south of Cairo. Five more died in Suez.

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