President Mohamed Morsi abruptly canceled plans on Tuesday, August 7 to attend the funeral of 16 soldiers killed during an attack by militants in the Sinai Peninsula after protesters shouting anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans chased the country’s prime minister from an earlier prayer service, The New York Times reported. “You killed them, you dogs,” the protesters shouted at Prime Minister Hesham Qandil, state news media reported. The killings of the soldiers, which represented Morsi’s first real crisis, have aggravated the political clash between the Brotherhood, on one side, and its more secular rivals including Egypt’s powerful military leaders. The president’s latest vulnerability stems from his closeness with Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that governs the Gaza Strip. After the attack, some of Morsi’s critics cast his relationship with the group as a liability.