Volunteer firefighting force decimated in Texas fertilizer plant explosion

At least 11 firefighters – most of them volunteers – appear to have died in a huge explosion and fire at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, reports signal. Much of the nation relies on volunteer firefighters.

Pro- and anti-Islamist protesters clash in Egypt

A wounded protester is carried in Tahrir Square after being injured in fighting between pro and anti-Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, April 19, 2013. Clashes erupted Friday between several hundred opponents and supporters of Egypt’s Islamist president during a rally by his allies calling on him to “cleanse the judiciary” of alleged supporters of the old regime. (AP Photo/Mostafa Elshemy)

An Egyptian fireman extinguishes a fire reported to be set by black block protesters on a bus belongs to Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, April 19, 2013. Several hundred supporters and opponents of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi clashed near Cairo's Tahrir Square amid a rally calling on Morsi to "cleanse the judiciary." (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

CAIRO (AP) — Supporters and opponents of Egypt's Islamist president battled in the streets near Tahrir Square on Friday as an Islamist rally demanding a purge of the judiciary devolved into violence.

The rally centered on a contentious aspect of the country's deep political polarization — the courts. Islamist backers of President Mohammed Morsi say the judiciary is infused with former regime loyalists who are blocking his policies, while opponents fearIslamists want to take over the courts and get rid of secular-minded judges to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood's power.

But beyond the specific issues, the scenes of youths from both sides waving homemade pistols and beating each other with sticks illustrated how entrenched violence has become in Egypt's political crisis. In recent weeks, several marches and rallies by the country's various camps have devolved into street battles, fueling the bitterness on all sides.

Thousands of Morsi supporters — mostly backers of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist hard-liners — held rallies Friday outside the High Court building in Cairo and in the coastal city of Alexandria, demanding the "cleansing of the judiciary."

The marches appeared aimed at presenting Islamists' actions on the courts as a popular "demand of the revolution." Islamist lawmakers who dominate the legislature have announced plans to begin debating a bill regulating the judiciary, presenting it as aimed at ensuring the independence of courts they contend are dominated by supporters of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak.

But opponents believe the Islamists aim to remove judges and install new ones who support their agenda. In an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper this month, the former head of the Brotherhood, Mehdi Akef, called the judiciary "sick" and "corrupt" and said a new law could force out 3,500 of Egypt's approximately 13,000 judges and prosecution officials by lowering the retirement age to 60 from 70 — though it remains to be seen if lowering the age will be in the final bill.

"Go for it Morsi and we are behind you. Cleanse the judiciary," thousands of Islamists chanted outside the High Court building. Some, mainly followers of ultraconservative cleric Hazem Abu Ismail, waved black Islamic flags.

As some Islamists moved toward Cairo's Tahrir Square, they were met by anti-Morsi youth a few blocks from the square, some of them in black masks. It was not clear who started the clashes, but it led to both sides pelting each other with stones and firing gunshots. One bus was seen set on fire. The sound of birdshot cracked through the air in the clashes, and tear gas was fired — even though there were no police nearby.

Some of the masked youths and Islamists were seen with homemade pistols. Others wielded iron bars and tree branches and broke up street pavements to throw the chunks of asphalt and concrete. More than 80 people were injured, according to the state news agency MENA.

Amid the battles, Islamists were seen dragging rivals to the ground and beating them. In one case, they beat a protester then shoved him into an ambulance, forced the ambulance workers out and drove off in the vehicle.

Ahmed Hamdi, a Muslim Brotherhood supporter at the scene, blamed the anti-Morsi protesters for the violence, calling them "thugs" and saying they set the bus on fire.

"The whole story is they see that Islamists are now in power. They can't swallow this, that Islamists rule them. It's a battle with the old regime," he said.

As the clashes raged, Abu Ismail spoke to supporters at a mosque, telling them, "The death of 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 is nothing if in return the Islamic nation lives."

Egypt has been deeply divided for months over Morsi's rule and the political dominance of his Islamist allies, leading to repeated violence even as the country's economy continues to deteriorate.

Morsi's opponents accuse the Islamists of hijacking the revolution, not living up to his earlier election campaign promises to have inclusive political process and of monopolizing power and allowing human rights abuses. The president, the Brotherhood and Islamist politicians say the opposition is using street violence to topple elected Islamists and destabilize the country.

The judiciary has become a significant battleground — the sole branch of government not dominated by Morsi's Islamist allies, although he does have some backers among the judges.

Many judges accuse Morsi of trying to undermine their authority, while the president's allies charge that Mubarak supporters in the courts are blocking Morsi and derail Egypt's transition to democracy.

The Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, says reforming the judiciary is a completion of the revolution. The group criticized the courts this week over several recent acquittals of former Mubarak officials and over a court order to release Mubarak himself during his re-trial on charges of killing protesters during the 2011 uprising that led to his ouster. Mubarak remains in custody over other charges and is unlikely to be released.

During Friday's rallies, Mohammed el-Beltagi, a leading Brotherhood member, told supporters that the judiciary is backing "the counter-revolution" and that Egypt is in need of "revolutionary decisions," referring the new judicial law.

The head of the Brotherhood's political party, Saad el-Katatni, told a political gathering Thursday that it is time to "complete work on the institutions." He insisted that "the people who carried out the revolution don't allow any authority, even the judiciary, to transgress on popular will."

On Friday, el-Katatni dismissed accusations that the group aims to monopolize power as "a blatant lie."

Leftist, secular and revolutionary groups have long called for reforming the judiciary, the Interior Ministry and other institutions to fight corruption and remove Mubarak holdovers. But they fear theIslamists will only to install their own supporters.

The leftist opposition Popular Current Party said that the Islamists' call for rallies were "a right used to serve a wrong."

"This is the beginning of a massacre of the Egyptian judiciary," it said in a statement. "It is clear that the Muslim Brotherhood aims at executing a new scenario to monopolize the judiciary."

Not all Islamist parties joined Friday's rally, with several ultraconservative Salafi groups staying away. The leader of the Salafi Nour Party, Younis Makhyoun, blamed the Brotherhood for Friday's violence, saying the call for the rally only "fuels volatility, division and chaos."

The judiciary has dealt the Islamist camp several setbacks. Courts dissolved the Islamist-majority lower house of parliament last year, saying the law governing its election was invalid. This year, a court forced a delay in elections for a new parliament when it ruled that a new election law had to be reviewed by the Supreme Constitutional Court.

The election had been due to start this month but they have been put off with no new date set. In the meantime, the upper house of parliament — the Shura Council, a normally powerless body elected by no more than 6 percent of voters and where Islamists hold an overwhelming majority — is serving as the legislature.

The courts and Morsi have had frequent frictions since his inauguration in June.

In November, Morsi infuriated many in the judiciary by issuing decrees that made his decisions immune from judicial challenge for a time, protected a constitutional assembly from being dissolved by the courts and unilaterally installed a new prosecutor.

The prosecutor remains in place despite a court order last month annulling his appointment.

"We all call for reforming the judiciary, not controlling it," said Nasser Amin, the head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary. The aim of getting rid of so many judges at once would be "to control the whole system and use it against opponents."

Fierce battles in Syria; US to raise aid to rebels

This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows anti Syrian regime protesters chanting slogans and waving the Syrian revolutionary flag during a demonstration, in Aleppo, Syria, Friday, April 19, 2013. Gunmen killed a government official in a Damascus restaurant, Syrian state media and activists reported Friday as regime troops and rebels fought fierce battles near the Lebanese border.(AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)

BEIRUT (AP) — An artillery shell slammed into a pickup truck, killing nine members of a family during fierce fighting on Friday inSyria as U.S. officials said the Obama administration is poised to send millions more in non-lethal military aid to rebels trying to oust President Bashar Assad.

The attack that killed one woman, her four children and four nieces and nephews, who were all under 12, was the latest carnage to hit the northern town of Saraqeb. Just days earlier, a government airstrike killed at least 20 people, shattering store fronts and setting cars ablaze in the strategic town in Idlib province on the main highway from Syria's largest urban center of Aleppo.

Rebels have wrested much of the countryside of Idlib and other provinces in the north from regime forces, although government troops still control many military bases in the region from which they launch attacks — including airstrikes — on opposition-held areas.

Also on Friday, another 18 people were killed in heavy fighting in and around Homs, the country's third largest city near the Lebanese border, and a Syrian Army official was assassinated northeast of the capital, Damascus. The state-run SANA news agency said "terrorists" — the government's word for opposition fighters — shot and killed Syrian Army Col. Tamim Abdullah as he was driving home in Barzeh.

The assassination was the latest in a series of killings of government and security officials and regime supporters in the capital. A day earlier, Ali Ballan, the head of public relations at the Ministry of Social Affairs and a member of Syria's relief agency, was killed by gunmen as he was dining in a restaurant in Mazzeh, a western Damascus neighborhood.

More than 70,000 people have been killed so far in the Syrian conflict, which began with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war. The U.N. Security Council has been deadlocked for months on the Syrian war, and even the most modest attempts to end the bloodshed have failed.

Western and Arab nations blame the conflict on Assad's government. Russia insists on assigning equal blame for the suffering to the Syrian opposition and rebels fighting on the ground, and has cast vetoes, along with China, to block draft council resolutions. A U.N. envoy on Friday gave the Security Council a grim assessment of the two-year war, saying that the Assad government had been uncooperative in negotiations.

In Washington, U.S. officials said Secretary of State John Kerry was expected to announce a significant expansion of non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition at an international conference on Syria he will attend Saturday in Turkey. The officials told The Associated Press that Kerry is expected to announce a contribution of between $120 million and $130 million in defensive military supplies, which could include body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and advanced communications equipment.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to preview Kerry's announcement publicly.

Also, the European Union is looking for ways to bolster the forces fighting to oust Assad, and is set to ease its oil embargo on Syria, two diplomats said Friday. The decision would allow the import of oil production technology and the sale of crude from territory held by the Syrian opposition, in close coordination with the movement's leaders, they said. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal decision by the bloc's 27 foreign ministers at a meeting Monday in Luxembourg.

For months, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been promoting a peace plan that would call for a transitional government in which Assad would step aside — a demand the Syrian president has repeatedly dismissed. After briefing the Security Council behind closed doors, Brahimi told reporters: "With the Syrians, I got nowhere."

He said there had been some progress with the Americans and the Russians, "but it is too little."

"If they really believe that they are in charge of looking after peace and security, there is no time for them to lose to really take this question more seriously than they have until now," Brahimi said.

Elsewhere in Syria, heavy fighting was reported near the contested town of Qusair in the central Syrian province of Homs, a day after government forces captured a town in the province and rebels seized a military base in the area. The 18 people killed in central Syrian died during the shelling of Deir Baalba district on the eastern edge of the city of Homs, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.

The border region in Homs is strategic because it also links Damascus with the coastal enclave that is the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot. The coast also is home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus. Assad's regime is dominated by his Alawites while the rebels are mostly from the country's Sunni majority.

Government forces on Thursday captured the town of Abel, cutting off the road between Homs and Qusair, according to Abdul-Rahman. He said the regime appeared to be trying to conduct a siege on Qusair.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said Syrian army warplanes bombarded the area around Qusair on Friday.

Both activist groups also reported heavy clashes in Damascus's southern suburb of Daraya, which the regime has been trying to recapture for months. They also reported clashes in Aleppo, Idlib and Raqqa in the north and in the southern province of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad began.

In the country's east, there were reports of heavy fighting in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province, with clashes between government troops and rebels concentrated on the airport in the outskirts of the provincial capital. There were no immediate reports on the casualties in the fighting.

Since late 2012, rebels have been seizing fields in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, one of two main centers of oil production. Most recently, they captured the Jbeysa oil field, one of the country's largest, after three days of fighting in February.

Before the uprising, the oil sector was a pillar of Syria's economy, with the country producing about 380,000 barrels a day and exports — mostly to Europe — bringing in more than $3 billion in 2010. Oil revenues provided around a quarter of the funds for the government budget.

Oil production now is likely about half that, according to estimates. The government has not released recent production figures.

The civil war continues to take a heavy toll on civilians.

More than 5 million Syrians have fled their homes because of the relentless fighting, seeking shelter in neighboring countries or in other parts of Syria where the violence has temporarily subsided.

In the past few weeks, U.N.'s humanitarian agencies have warned that they were running low on resources and that without additional funds they would be forced to scale back relief efforts.

On Thursday, U.N.'s Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said children were starving to death in Syria and asked the Security Council to approve cross-border relief operations into Syria to deliver aid them and other civilians.

About half of the $1.5 billion needed to fund Syria's humanitarian needs through June has been collected, Amos said, noting a recent $300 million pledge from Kuwait.

Amos said 6.8 million Syrians were in need, with 4.25 million displaced within Syria and 1.3 million as refugees in neighboring countries.

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AP writers Matthew Lee and Lara Jakes in Washington and Juergen Baetz in Brussels and Peter James Spielmann at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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