CAIRO, Egypt – The prospect of a liberal, democratic Egypt survived a grave challenge this weekend after the ousted leader of the country’s oldest and largest secular opposition party stormed its headquarters with at least 50 armed men and held the building and its inhabitants hostage for 10 hours.

When it was all over, 27 people were injured, the ornate seat of the Wafd Party was a charred shambles, and its former leader, Noaman Gomaa, was in jail.

Yesterday, the new leaders of the Wafd blamed the regime for acquiescing to the ill-fated raid. The riot police on the scene did not intervene for hours, even after Mr. Gomaa’s men had fired shots and the former leader shouted obscenities from the roof, flanked by two snipers.

The incoming president of the Wafd, Mahmoud Abaza, yesterday said he believed his predecessor was implicitly given permission to strong-arm his way into the offices by the head of Egypt’s powerful Shura Council, Jawat al-Sharif.

“I don’t understand this. It was an exceptional situation,” Mr Abaza, a member of parliament, said. “Seventeen people were shot in 10 hours. I talked to the police. I sent two people to the public prosecutor. I think the police had been ordered not to interfere. But no one could have imagined the situation would escalate like this. When it got to this state, everyone was afraid.” Reuters reported yesterday that only eight people were shot.

The fate of the Wafd, Egypt’s oldest political party, formed from and named after the Egyptian independence delegation to the 1918 Versailles conference ending World War I, should matter to a White House at least rhetorically committed to the spread of democracy in the Middle East, observers say.

Unlike Egypt’s strongest opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wafd advertises its commitment to a secular state. Its flag features both an Islamic crescent and a Christian cross. Since the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, the party has formally opposed the emergency laws and military courts that human rights organizations say are used arbitrarily against the regime’s political opponents. The party’s newspaper is the longest consecutively running opposition publication in the country.

Unlike the start-up Kefaya coalition, the Wafd Party also controls significant resources. It maintains 141 regional bureaus and has accumulated more than $12 million, making it the only legal party in the country that eschews public financing, to say nothing of foreign money.

Nonetheless, under the leadership of Mr. Gomaa in particular, the party established a reputation for pulling its punches. Mr. Gomaa, according to party members, would often censor news stories in the party newspaper if they were critical of the Interior Ministry, which controls the security services.

Mr. Gomaa undermined candidates, including the campaign of Mr. Abaza, who said visits to his home province were never covered in the party newspaper. And after Mr. Gomaa’s disastrous challenge to President Mubarak in September, when he finished a distant third, he began to fire many of the party’s senior officials.

The Wafd leadership blames Mr. Gomaa in part for the fact that it only won six seats in last November’s flawed parliamentary election. On January 18, the general assembly of the party formally expelled Mr. Gomaa from the Wafd. In the campaign that led to his ouster, he was accused of collaborating with the ruling party and the regime.

Despite the carnage of Saturday, the party’s largest adversary, Mr. Gomaa, has sabotaged his political career. At the same time, there is a chance that the clashes on Saturday could result in punitive measures for the Wafd. The state’s committee on political parties will decide today whether to take up the issue of clashes within the party, according to a statement from Mr. al-Sharif.

On Saturday, the head of the Shura Council told al-Ahram, a state-funded newspaper, that his committee “does not have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Wafd or other political parties.” Mr. Abaza interprets this as a sign the state will not close down his party because of the weekend clashes.

Nonetheless, Mr. Abaza also said he suspects Mr. al-Sharif had implicitly given Mr. Gomaa the green light to storm the party’s headquarters. “The two of them met on Tuesday, the same day the court gave its judgment.” That judgment was in a civil case against the part of the old leadership who recognized the results of the January 18 internal party vote. “I think, but I don’t know, that in that meeting al-Sharif told Noaman he would not have problems with the police,” Mr. Abaza said.

Today Mr. Gomaa, a former dean of Cairo University’s law school and high profile attorney, is facing what most observers here expect to be life in prison. His antics on Saturday were captured on video cell phones, and the standoff between his faction and the Wafd Party was covered extensively by Al Jazeera.

An eyewitness and journalist working at the party’s headquarters when Mr. Gomaa’s party arrived yesterday said the armed men chased him through the building shortly after they arrived.

“They shot the locks off of the gates and came into the building,” Sameer Beheiry said. “I went out to see what was going on, but I then saw a flurry of shots. They started calling me names, like son of a bitch. And then they chased me inside the building carrying long blades, chains, and pistols.

“I closed the doors behind me, but they shot and stabbed their way through and came after me. Then they tied my hands behind my back and started beating me.”

Mr. Beheiry, whose arm was in a sling and who still had marks on his face, said that a member of parliament, Ahmad Nasser kept shouting for the armed men to kill him. “I was saved because one of the thugs said, ‘We can’t kill him. He’s a journalist.'” Other eyewitnesses said the raiders stripped the Wafd compound guards and stole wallets and cell phones.

As word of the raid got out on Saturday to members of the party loyal to the new leadership, young men descended on the compound. By afternoon, the crowd started throwing rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails to smoke out Mr. Gomaa and the armed men.

A vice president of the party and member of the Shura Council, Mohammed Sarham, yesterday said, “The police forces did nothing for six hours. They said they could not interfere after they saw the shooting. So after six hours of trying to negotiate, we were forced to take matters into our hands.”

By dusk, the police finally did enter the compound and arrested Mr. Gomaa and members of his party who did not escape.

For Mr. Abaza, Mr. Sarham and others in the Wafd, it seemed that Mr. Gomaa was becoming unhinged. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Gomaa screamed at a member of the audience during a campaign stop, calling him “Khawal,” a slang term for homosexual. The outburst was caught by al-Jazeera and broadcast repeatedly.

The head of the constituency from Mr. Gomaa’s home district, Tarek Tohamy, said yesterday that the former leader often berated women in his office, his face turning red with rage.

Mr. Abaza said that on the day of the vote that ended up expelling him from the party, he brought some of the same armed men from Saturday’s raid to the general assembly meeting. “I remember they were trying to block the vote and they were screaming at us,” he said.

When Mr. Sarham was asked whether Mr. Gomaa was going mad, he stopped speaking Arabic briefly and said in English, “Yes, he was crazy.”

Mr. Sarham smiled as he noted that Mr. Gomaa was going to jail, and said the party would send along the traditional meal of prisoners to him. “We will call the warden and make sure he gets our bread and jam.”