Egyptian riot police clashed on Sunday with Cairo pig farmers trying to prevent their animals being taken away for slaughter, an AFP correspondent said.
Between 300 and 400 residents of a district of Cairo threw stones and bottles at police as they arrived to take away their animals for a cull.
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| Egypt's call to kill pigs amid flu scare ridiculed / Associated Press |
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Some Egyptians call government's decision to slaughter all of country's pigs knee-jerk overreaction; 'killing pigs is not a solution, otherwise, we should kill the people, because the virus spreads through them,' op-ed says |
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Anti-riot police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, most of them youths.
Egypt began a mass cull of the nation's 250,000 pigs on Saturday, despite the World Health Organization saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans.
Officials are calling the slaughter a general health measure. No cases of swine flu,
or influenza A(H1N1), have been reported in Egypt,
the most populous country in the Arab world.
Egypt's pigs mostly belong to and are eaten by members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority and are reared by rubbish collectors in Cairo's shantytowns.
The rubbish collectors, who used the pigs to dispose of organic waste and sell off some animals from their herds once a year, say the cull will affect their business and wipe out a crucial source of income.
Although no cases of swine flu have been reported in Egypt, the country has been battling an outbreak of bird flu.
Twenty-six people have died in Egypt from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since it was first identified in early 2006 and the country has seen an increase in cases over the past two months.
The WHO called in March for an investigation into why many of the victims have been young children.
Health ministry spokesman Abdurrahman Shahin last month described the swine flu situation as "worrying."
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