CAIRO (Reuters) – One man was killed and 15 people were injured in an attack against a protest by hundreds of supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi near Cairo University early Tuesday morning, a state-run news website said.
Al-Ahram Online said police fired tear gas to quell the violence and several cars in the area were destroyed or set on fire.
Police sources said hundreds of pro-Mursi supporters clashed with local residents, street vendors and others near Cairo University’s main campus in Giza province, south of Cairo. They said gunshots were fired and stones were thrown during the incident.
One person was killed and around 20 were injured on Monday in clashes between Mursi supporters and opponents in central Cairo. Around 100 have been killed since the army overthrew Mursi, elected last year, on July 3 after mass protests.
The Muslim Brotherhood said on the Facebook page of its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which Mursi headed before he was elected president in June 2012, that five were killed in Tuesday’s clashes.
“Leaders of the military coup continue to terrorize the peaceful protesters in Egypt,” the FJP said in a statement in English.
The Brotherhood accuses the army of orchestrating a coup that has exposed deep political divisions in the Arab world’s most populous and influential nation.
FJP said the ministers of defence and interior, whom it called “the leaders of the coup,” would be held responsible for any future attempts to evacuate the Brotherhood protest areas.
Mursi’s supporters are maintaining a round-the-clock vigil, now in its third week, in a Cairo suburb. They say they will continue until Mursi, held by the army in an unknown location since his ouster, is reinstated.
Some residents close to the Brotherhood’s main protest area in Nasr City have filed a complaint with the public prosecutor asking for the removal of the protesters, who they say are disturbing their lives.
An informed security source said the case is expected to be taken to a court and ruled upon soon “to give the army a legal basis to end the protests.”
(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Yasmine Saleh; Editing by Eric Walsh)
