Cairo: At least 846 Egyptians died in the nearly three-week-long popular uprising that toppled long-serving President Hosni Mubarak and electrified the region, a government fact-finding mission announced on Tuesday.
In their report, the panel of judges described police forces shooting protesters in the head and chest with live ammunition and presented a death toll more than twice that of previous official estimates.
"The fatal shots were due to firing bullets at the head and the chest," the report read, adding that "a huge number of eye injures," filled hospitals, and hundreds lost their sight.
Earlier official estimates had put the toll from the days of demonstrations, in which protesters battled heavily armed legions of riot police, at 365.
The mission held Mubarak ultimately responsible for the killing of the protesters since his interior minister, Habib el-Adly, had issued the orders to open fire.
The commission based its report on officials and eyewitnesses accounts along with footage and pictures obtained from individuals who were present at the protests.
Mubarak was forced to step down on Feb. 11 by massive demonstrations against his three decades in power. One of the protesters' chief complaints was the corruption that pervades the government, its bureaucracy and virtually all levels of society.
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