Echoes of Tiananmen in Egypt protest camp

These images of a woman standing between a bulldozer and an injured protester in Egypt quickly spread across social networks on Wednesday, with many viewers reminded of the celebrated photo from Tiananmen Square of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks during the 1989 protests in Beijing.

Cairo-based photographer Mohammed Abdel Moneim, who freelances for AFP, had a feeling something big was going to happen when he arrived at the sprawling Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp in east Cairo early Wednesday morning.

The atmosphere was tense, and protesters for Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi clearly were on edge. Though security officials had spoken of a gradual dispersal of the camp and another in central Cairo, the dramatic raid of the camps shortly after dawn came as a surprise to many.

The authorities’ decisive clear-out operation led to scores of deaths and injuries.

As Moneim worked among the chaos and bloodshed of the operation, he spotted one woman – a bystander – who was pleading with officials for restraint and trying to help the injured. When she saw this injured young man lying on the floor, she stood between him and the path of an army bulldozer, imploring the driver to stop. It’s impossible to say what would have happened had she not been there, but the bulldozer stopped and the woman was able to talk to an army officer.

The fate of the young man is not certain, but at the time of taking these photos he was seriously injured having been shot by birdshot.