By James M. Dorsey

The death of at least 40 highly politicised and battle-hardened Egyptian football fans raises the stakes for the efforts of general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to suppress dissent.

The incident is one of the worst in Egyptian sporting history and the latest in a number of mass killings involving security forces since Sisi overthrew Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, in a military coup in 2013.

In some ways it resembled the politically loaded brawl in Port Said three years ago in which 74 fans died. It is also likely to re-energise Egypt’s growing ‘ultras’ movement. Inspired by European football ‘firms’, the ultras played a key role in toppling president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. They formed street-fighting units during the subsequent protests against his military successors, while they have taken stances against Morsi – a member of the since outlawed Muslim Brotherhood – and his successor Sisi.

Like in Port Said, many of the fans in Cairo died of suffocation in a stampede. This crush occurred when police used tear gas to stop members of Zamalek’s ‘Ultras White Knights’ (UWK) from forcing their way into Cairo’s Air Defence Stadium, where their storied Cairo team was playing a Egyptian Premier League match against ENPPI.

The incident refocused attention on stadia as a major flashpoint of opposition to successive Egyptian governments.