Death & Danger

The Egyptians claimed that Tommies started it, by firing on a truck loaded with Egyptian police; the British charged that Egyptian terrorists began it, by sniping at military engineers. Either way, before the skirmish outside the canal zone city of Suez was ended last week, 16 Egyptians and 13 Britons were dead. So long as increasingly embittered adversaries faced each other, guns in hand, such clashes and more deaths seemed inevitable.

Day by day, the restraining ties were loosening. British engineers, protected by a paratroop brigade and tanks, bulldozed an evacuated Egyptian hamlet off the ' map to build a road between the garrison and its water filtering plant. Commanding General Sir George Erskine decreed: "All routes in and out of Suez are closed . . . I will not accept armed [Egyptian] police anywhere near my troops."

The inward pressure on the Cairo government to do something against the British also grew by the day. Mobs roaming through Cairo cried for arms and blood revenge, and were stopped finally by police firing into the air. The cabinet met to discuss breaking off diplomatic relations with Britain. Over Egypt's restless land hung the expectancy of more trouble.

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