Mayhem in Nasr City + Somalia on Turkey's Southern Border

The sit-in in front of the Republican Guard officers' club in Nasr City where deposed president Mohamed Morsi is believed to be held was fired on. Over 40 people are reported dead. This from David Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim, "At Least 40 Die as Soldiers Said to Open Fire on Morsi Backers":

Egyptian soldiers opened fire on hundreds of unarmed supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi early Monday as they were praying before dawn outside the facility where he is believed to be detained, dozens of witnesses said. 

At least 43 civilians were killed, all or most of them shot, and more than 300 wounded, doctors and health officials said. Security officials said one police officer died as well. 

The attack marked a sharp escalation in the confrontation between the generals who forced out the president and his Islamist supporters in the streets. 

Dozens of Islamists who had gathered in vigil for Mr. Morsi denied there was any provocation for the attack. Two bystanders who had supported Mr. Morsi’s ouster also said that the demonstrators were unarmed and ran in terror as the attack began. 

Bullet holes in cars, lampposts and corrugated metal barriers indicated that gunfire was coming from the top of a nearby building where the sandbag barriers around makeshift gun turrets were visible. Bullet casings on the ground and collected by Islamist demonstrators bore the label of the Egyptian Army.

It would be remarkable if this doesn't spark a move by Islamists away from civil protest to civil war in Egypt. David Kirkpatrick reports that Al Nour, the Salafi party that scuttled the naming of Mohamed ElBaradei as prime minister, has withdrawn from negotiations over the composition of the interim government as a result of the massacre. This might be just as well since Al Nour's bottom line is the inclusion of Islamic law in any Egyptian Constitution. Eventually this was going to be a flash point with the other members of the anti-Morsi coalition. The downside is that it removes the Islamic fig leaf from the anti-Morsi coalition, making it harder to argue this isn't about secularism vs. religion in politics.

Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada have a story this morning, "Opposition in Syria Continues to Fracture," covered yesterday by Reuters, about fighting between rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army and the new Al Qaeda franchise on the block, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham:

Islamist fighters said recently that they had driven a rival rebel brigade out of Raqqa, a rebel-held provincial capital in northeastern Syria, because they had found some of its fighters drinking wine and consorting with women, and because they considered brigade reluctant to fight.

And in the most recent confrontation, in Dana, a rebel-held town in Idlib Province near the Turkish border, members of an extremist Islamist group were accused of beheading two rival fighters and leaving their severed heads beside a garbage can in a town square.

That grim discovery on Sunday followed a protest and clashes in the town, highlighting the antagonism that some Syrian fighters and civilians are beginning to feel toward some of the radical factions. 

Simmering tensions within the insurgency have intensified lately, especially between rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose-knit umbrella group backed by the West, and members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham, the new Syria-based affiliate of Al Qaeda, which includes the well-armed fighters of the Nusra Front.

The disputes that have erupted in provinces like Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo are often centered as much on individual egos and economic resources as on ideology. Still, the frictions inhibit the insurgency from functioning as a single fighting force, and as government forces have appeared to retake control of some rebel-held territory, they are threatening to deepen into a new conflict that would further weaken the rebels on the battlefield.

According to residents, activists and fighters, popular resentment toward radical factions including foreign fighters began sweeping into villages that had been under the control of the Free Syrian Army and trying to impose their strict conception of Islamic law, sometimes even carrying out summary public executions. 

The Nusra and Free Syrian Army fighters have accused each other of profiting from the war, demanding bribes at checkpoints and selling oil from captured wells. The Qaeda-affiliated units are said to be buying up land in Aleppo and Idlib Provinces and trying to monopolize supplies of wheat and fuel, Reuters reported.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that the SAA has taken the Khaldiyeh district in Homs. There has been intense fighting in the rebel-held areas of Homs. The government appears to be adding territory to its control. And with the news out of Idlib of rebel factions at war with each other and civilians being mowed down in the crossfire, it's time for the warhawk U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to get real and agree to conditions to get talks underway as soon as possible. Otherwise we're looking at a situation where there will be a Somalia-type Hobbesian state on Turkey's southern border.