Cairo Fire

Cairo fire / Black Saturday
Rivoli Cinema on fire
Location	Cairo, Egypt
Coordinates	30°3′29″N 31°13′44″E / 30.05806°N 31.22889°E / 30.05806; 31.22889Coordinates: 30°3′29″N 31°13′44″E / 30.05806°N 31.22889°E / 30.05806; 31.22889
Date	26 January 1952 (1952-01-26) 12:30 pm – 11 pm (UTC+02:00)
Target	Buildings owned by or associated with Europeans
Attack type	Riots, arson
Deaths	26 (inc. 9 Britons)
Non-fatal injuries	552
Perpetrator	Unknown (several theories)

The Cairo fire (Arabic: حريق القاهرة‎‎), also known as Black Saturday, was a series of riots that took place on 26 January 1952, marked by the burning and looting of some 750 buildings —retail shops, cafes, cinemas, hotels, restaurants, theatres, nightclubs and the country's Opera House— in Downtown Cairo. The direct trigger of the riots was the killing by British occupation troops of 50 Egyptian auxiliary policemen in the city of Ismaïlia in a one-sided battle a day earlier. The spontaneous anti-British protests that followed these deaths were quickly seized upon by organized elements in the crowd, who burned and ransacked large sectors of Cairo amidst the unexplained absence of security forces. The fire is thought by some to have signalled the end of the Kingdom of Egypt. The perpetrators of the Cairo Fire remain unknown to this day, and the truth about this important event in modern Egyptian history has yet to be established. The disorder that befell Cairo during the 1952 fire has recently been compared to the chaos that followed the anti-government protests of 28 January 2011, which saw genuine demonstrations take place amidst massive arson and looting, an inexplicable withdrawal of the police and organized prison-breaking.

In 1952, the British occupation of Egypt was entering its 70th year, but was limited to the Suez Canal zone. On the morning of 25 January 1952, Brigadier Kenneth Exham, the British commander, issued a warning to Egyptian policemen in Ismaïlia, demanding that they surrender their weapons and leave the canal zone entirely. By doing so, the British aimed to get rid of the only manifestation of Egyptian governmental authority in the canal zone. They also wanted to end the aid the police force was providing to anti-British fedayeen groups. The Ismailia Governorate refused the British request, a refusal that was reiterated by interior minister Fouad Serageddin. As a result, 7,000 British soldiers equipped with machine guns, tanks and armour surrounded the governorate building and its barracks, containing nearly 700 Egyptian officers and soldiers. Armed only with rifles, the Egyptians refused to surrender their weapons. The British commander thus ordered his troops to bombard the buildings. Vastly outnumbered, the Egyptians continued to fight until they ran out of ammunition. The confrontation, which lasted two hours, left 50 Egyptians dead and 80 others injured. The rest were taken captive.