EGYPT: The massacre is unusual because it grossly violated the age-old tit-for-tat ratio and flouted the ban on killing children, writes Siona Jenkins in Cairo
A sensational new chapter in a long-running Egyptian family feud began on Sunday when 13 men from a single family were charged with the killing of 22 rival clan members in Upper Egypt last month.
Six other family members were charged with illegal possession of firearms and another man from the same family was charged with harbouring fugitives.
According to the police, the massacre took place in broad daylight on August 10th, when gunmen near the village of Beit Allam in Sohag governorate, some 400 km south of Cairo, ambushed a van filled with Hanashat family members.
The Hanashats were on their way to the trial of two relatives accused of murdering a member of the rival Abdel Halim clan last April.
The gunmen - all Abdel Halims - allegedly opened fire with automatic weapons, killing all but three Hanashats. A child of nine was among the victims.
They ignored the driver apparently because he was not a member of the clan.
Their gruesome task complete, the gunmen fired their weapons into the air in victory and hurried back to hide themselves and their male relatives in preparation for the inevitable retaliation.
In the aftermath of the massacre - the worst in Upper Egypt since 1995 when 24 were killed in Minya governorate - Hanashat family members refused to receive condolences which, according to vendetta tradition, means that they intend to avenge their dead.
Despite a heavy police presence in the area, and inter-clan attempts to mediate, few doubt that sooner or later the Hanashats will strike back.
In much the same way that the infamous Hatfields and McCoys were viewed with appalled fascination in the late 19th century in the United States, Egyptian pundits have seized upon the feud as a sign of the backwardness and poverty of southern Egypt.
Beautiful but desperately poor, Sohag governorate is out of sight of the tourists who flock to the antiquities of the southern towns of Luxor and Aswan.
Farms can no longer sustain the population, illiteracy is high, families are large and employment is scarce.
This is the heartland of the "taar" or vendetta, where Egypt's southern clans enforce their own code of honour, usually in response to disputes over land, money or pride, according to an age-old tradition.
"Vendetta is a defence mechanism for the clan's dignity and status. It is also a territorial affair," Islamist expert Diaa Rashwan wrote in the english-language Al-Ahram Weekly last month.
Rashwan, who is from Upper Egypt, has shown how the tradition even affected the radical Islamist group al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, which sometimes acted as a clan during its campaign of violence in Upper Egypt in the mid-1990s, killing policemen in retaliation for Gama'a deaths.
In the relentless eye-for-an-eye logic of the vendetta, if differences between members of different clans erupt into violence, revenge is obligatory for all male clan members. The victim does not have to be the perpetrator of the original crime but, if the retaliation is seen as proportional, the differences between the two clans are considered resolved.
Until they are, no male clan member is safe.
The Hanashat-Abdel Halim feud began with a fight between two children at a wedding in 1990. After the killing of an Abdel Halim by a Hanashat last April, the local police mediated a reconciliation between the two feuding families.
The Hanashat massacre was unusual because it not only broke the rules of the reconciliation and grossly violated the age-old tit-for-tat ratio, but it flouted the ban on killing children (women are also exempt from feuds).
To complicate matters still more, 13 Abdel Halim women are married to Hanashat men. Most of their husbands have said they will divorce them.
The village of Beit Allam, where the Hanashats and Abdel Halims lived side by side until August (the Abdel Halims have now fled to neighbouring villages) has been shocked by the scale of the violence.
Although the mayor told journalists that mediation would begin once tempers had cooled, the Hanashats remain defiant.
"Vendetta is better than disgrace," proclaimed Abu Zeid Abu Henish, a leader of the Hanashat clan, in local papers after the massacre.
"We will never forget our feud no matter how many years go by," said another family member.
Even if the 13 Abdel Halims who have been accused of murder are found guilty by a court, the death sentences they could face will not satisfy the rules of the feud.
Until 22 members of their clan have been killed, or the vicious cycle is somehow broken, all Abdel Halim men will remain in hiding.