A building housing Israel’s embassy in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, has been stormed by protesters who tore down one of the outer embassy walls.
The Protesters demolished the perimeter wall and replaced the Israeli flag with Egyptian and Palestinian flags. They got inside and threw paper documents from upper-floor windows.
Destroyed wall has been a focus for protests, with makeshift battering rams and hammers on Friday after peaceful protests in Tahrir Square earlier in the day against the country’s military rulers.
In response, Essam Sharaf, the Egyptian prime minister, summoned a cabinet crisis team to discuss the situation, and the interior ministry declared a state of alert.
Yitzhak Levanon, Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt, and senior embassy staff were evacuated and flown home to Israel, Israel Radio said.
Hundreds of Egyptian soldiers backed by armoured cars were rushed to the embassy district and clashed with the protesters, who torched police trucks and attacked regional police headquarters nearby.
Protesters played cat-and-mouse with police throughout the night, amid clouds of tear gas and smoke from burning tyres.
Security forces gradually asserted control and the situation was calm by Saturday morning.
The Egyptian health ministry said there had officially been 520 injuries as a result of clashes around the embassy. An earlier report said one person had died of a heart attack.
The group that swarmed the embassy had left a mass rally at nearby Tahrir Square, where organised protesters called for reforms by the military, which has ruled the country since Hosni Mubarak, the former president, was toppled by a popular revolution in February.
Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros said thousands of documents were thrown out of the windows and at least two police vehicles were set on fire.
Israel’s Ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon, his family and other embassy staff rushed to Cairo airport and left on a plane for Israel, Egyptian state television and airport officials said.
The state television also reported that Levanon met with a general of the ruling military’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before his departure, and that the ambassador appeared “anxious and even scared”.
Levanon had only recently returned to Cairo from a holiday in Israel as protests raged outside the embassy since last month.
US President Barack Obama was first to react, calling on Egypt to protect the embassy and “to honour its international obligations to safeguard the security of the Israeli Embassy.”
A White House statement said,”the President expressed his great concern about the situation at the embassy, and the security of the Israelis serving there.”
The statement said that Obama spoke by telephone to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and the two agreed, “to stay in close touch until the situation is resolved”.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, also called Mohamed Kamel Amr, Egypt’s foreign minister, to urge Egypt to meet its Vienna Convention obligations to protect diplomatic property, a senior state department official said.
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