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CAIRO: Egypt was on a state of alert on Saturday after protesters stormed the Israeli embassy, prompting the ambassador to flee, in the first attack of its kind since the two nations made peace 32 years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the mob attack a “serious incident” and an unnamed official warned it was a “painful blow to peace” between Egypt and the Jewish state.
US President Barack Obama asked Egypt to protect the embassy housed in a high-rise building overlooking the Nile in Cairo's Giza district, as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe expressed concern over Egyptian-Israeli ties.
The Israeli official said Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon, other staff and dependants had all left Egypt but that a senior diplomat remained behind.
“We left the deputy ambassador to keep up contact with the Egyptian government,” the official told AFP in Jerusalem.
He said six embassy staff were plucked to safety by Egyptian commandos.
“It was a painful blow to the peace between us and a grave violation of diplomatic norms,” the official said.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli government said Levanon would return to Egypt only after security could be guaranteed.
After a meeting with the ruling military council, Information Minister Osama Heikal had harsh words for the violence and said authorities will take all necessary steps to preserve order, including the protection of embassies.
Calling the unrest an “attack on Egypt's image,” he said “it is clear that the behaviour of certain people menaces the Egyptian state in its entirety” and that “exceptional circumstances demand decisive judicial measures.”
Consequently, the “security forces will have recourse to all necessary measures, including the right to legitimate self defence, to preserve the security of the homeland.”
He also said Cairo would apply “all articles” of an emergency law in force for 30 years that provides greater powers to the judiciary and police.
He also affirmed Egypt's “total commitment to respecting international conventions, including the protection of all (diplomatic) missions.”
The embassy attack was the worst since Israel established its mission in Egypt after becoming the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979.
The violence is also the worst episode in tense relations since the killing of five Egyptian policemen last month on the border as Israel hunted militants after a deadly attack.
Three people were killed in the overnight clashes between police and protesters, hospital sources said, and the health ministry said one person died of a heart attack.
More than 1,000 people, including some 300 policemen, were also injured in the clashes that continued overnight, medical and security sources said.
Police, meanwhile, arrested 19 people and referred them to the military prosecution which immediately began interrogating them, a security official said.
Protesters demolished a security wall around the mission with sledge-hammers, removed the Israeli flag and entered the embassy, grabbing thousands of documents.
They also torched police trucks and attacked the Giza police headquarters.
Hundreds of soldiers backed by armoured cars rushed to the area after Obama called on Cairo to protect the embassy.
Interior Minister Mansur al-Eissawy declared a state of high alert, cancelling all police leave, while Prime Minister Essam Sharaf called for an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday.
Quoting an “informed source,” government daily Al-Ahram reported on its website that “there is clear intention that the government will submit its resignation after its failure to contain” the violence.
The attack came as about 1,000 protesters marched from Tahrir Square where thousands had massed Friday to press Egypt's military rulers to keep promises of reform after a January-February revolt ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Israeli Defence Minister Minister Ehud Barak's office said he called US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta to request help protecting their embassy.
Obama spoke to Netanyahu by phone and expressed “great concern about the situation at the embassy, and the security of the Israelis serving there,” the White House said.
“The mob attack on the Israeli embassy is a serious incident but could have been worse had the rioters managed to get through the last door and hurt our people,” Ynet news website quoted Netanyahu as saying.
Israeli public radio said the six rescued men were security officers, and Netanyahu's office said they had returned home safe.
“When the violence got out of hand, some 80 (Israelis) were taken out” of Egypt, an Israeli official said. “All our people are safe and sound.”
Egyptian state television said that Levanon met a general of the ruling military's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before leaving Cairo, and that the ambassador appeared “anxious and even scared.”
