Egypt Vice-President Omar Suleiman survives attempt?

An assassination attempt was made on the life of Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman in which two of his bodyguards fell to bullets, a media report said.

Fox News said, “Such an attempt on the life of Omar Suleiman would mark an alarming turn in the uprising against the government of President Hosni Mubarak, who only recently named Suleiman as Vice-President in an effort to quell the unrest and possibly line up a successor.” But there was no official confirmation of the news.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, however, refused to comment on the issue.

Media efforts to confirm the incident have not materialised as no spokesperson was willing to take call from the reporters.

Meanwhile, journalist Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud (36), who was shot last week during clashes, died of his injuries on Friday.

Mahmoud was the first scribe to die in line of duty in Egypt’s anti-government protests.

Mahmoud, who had been working for Al-Taawun, received gun shot when he was taking photos of clashes between protesters and security forces from the balcony of his home on Jan 28, state-run newspaper Al-Ahram said.

His home was near central Tahrir Square, the main point of protest rallies.

The United Nations condemned the attacks on reporters saying they were an attempt to stifle coverage of anti-government protests.

US and India said the attacks on reporters, human rights workers and peaceful protesters in Egypt were “unacceptable.”

The Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera said its offices in Cairo were set ablaze, along with the equipment inside it.

The station announced later Friday that security forces arrested its Cairo bureau chief Abdel-Fattah Fayed and a correspondent Ahmed Youssef.

Mubarak supporters assaulted dozens of correspondents with virtual impunity in central Cairo this week with little intervention from the authorities.