Cairo, Jan 3 (IANS) At least two people were killed and nine others injured Friday in clashes across Egypt between supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and security forces, the country’s health ministry said.
Following the Friday prayers, hundreds of Morsi’s supporters took to the main squares in Egypt to protest the armed forces, the police and the new draft constitution, Xinhua reported.
One of the deaths was reported in Faiyum governorate and the other in the coastal city of Alexandria.
The protestors in the Faysal district in Giza hurled a Molotov cocktail at an armoured police vehicle and set it on fire. They also blocked the roads and fired at police officers, the official news agency MENA reported.
State TV’s footage showed hundreds of Morsi’s loyalists protesting in eastern Cairo’s Nasr City, carrying posters against the interim government and interim Defence Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who led the ouster of Morsi in July.
Egyptian security forces have intensified their presence in Cairo’s main streets following calls for renewed demonstrations by the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, a pro-Morsi coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The coalition urged the people “to continue their rage and peaceful resistance” in preparation for another demonstration Jan 8, the date set for the second session of Morsi’s trial over charges related to inciting violence and murdering of protesters outside the presidential palace in early December 2012.
The Islamists’ protests are defiant to the government’s protest law and its recent decision to declare the Brotherhood as “a terrorist group,” only one day after a deadly blast hit a security building in Daqahliya province.