Clashes Live Blog

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reported from Port Said on Saturday night, about the ongoing clashes between police and football fans:

It has been another violent night here in Port Said, all the action taking place in front of the Suez Canal Authority building where we saw army soldiers firing tear gas and also using water cannon against protesters. Mainly the protesters are fans from al-Masry football club, that's Port Said's own football club, hundreds of them had gathered. There is of course a purely football element to this. They are angry at the fact that their club has been suspended for the next two seasons and the ramifications that will have for the club. But much wider than that we are speaking to people in the street who feel that all of these sanctions are just blaming al-Masry fans and people here in Port Said for what happened on February the 1st. The people here blame the police for what happened on that night when over 70 people were killed at a football stadium. There is a lot of anger and aggression here. Meanwhile the military has decided to beef up security; central security force officers are being deployed to Port Said and more soldiers are being called from a nearby base in Ismailia to Port Said.

At least one person is reported to have been shot dead and 18 others injured in clashes between security forces and angry football fans in Egypt's Port Said after their club al-Masry was banned for two seasons following the country's worst stadium disaster, a medical source said.

The clashes began late on Friday and continued into the early hours of Saturday, witnesses said.

Read more on our website: Clashes as Egypt bans al-Masry football club

Egypt's new parliament voted on Monday to award cash handouts to people left severely handicapped in clashes with security during last year's uprising against Hosni Mubarak, in its latest move to boost compensation to victims of the violence.

Forces loyal to Mubarak killed around 850 people and injured thousands before he was toppled in a demonstration of people-power, that was a defining moment of the Arab Spring. 

Parliament voted to amend a draft law to give 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($16,600) to every protester severely handicapped by their injuries.

The draft law had originally only promised that level of payment to families of protesters who died. 

[Source: Reuters]

Activists say Syrian troops have fought with army defectors in several areas near the capital of Damascus.

The clashes in the suburbs of Qatana, Dumair and Tal came six weeks after President Bashar al-Assad's forces retook areas around the capital in a major military operation.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fight in Tal lasted until the early hours of Friday. The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees said the battles began Thursday.

The earlier drive to retake the Damascus suburb was followed by regime offensives to expel rebel forces from the Baba Amr district of Homs and Idlib in northern Syria.

[Associated Press]