CAIRO - A deadly gunfight erupted in Cairo on Friday as thousands of supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi marched on the Republican Guard headquarters during mass rallies against the Islamist’s ouster.
An AFP correspondent said at least three people were killed and many others wounded as shooting broke out after thousands of Islamist demonstrators approached the headquarters chanting “traitors” and “Morsi is our president”.
The bodies of two people were covered with sheets, said the correspondent, adding that another protester was shot in the head and fell to the ground, parts of his brain spilling from his skull. The Islamists had streamed towards the Guards headquarters on foot from a Muslim Brotherhood rally that attracted tens of thousands at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.
They accuse the military of conducting a brazen coup on Wednesday against Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, after millions called for his ouster on the June 30 anniversary of his first turbulent year in power.
Shortly before Friday’s rallies, around a dozen low-flying military jets screeched across Cairo, a day after warplanes had left a heart-shaped trail of smoke in the sky.
The show of force failed to deter Morsi’s supporters, however.
The supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood appeared at a Cairo rally in support of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi on Friday, after his movement denied he had been arrested.
Mohammed Badie, wearing a black suit and white shirt, addressed the crowd at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque where thousands had gathered to defend Morsi, who was overthrown on Wednesday by the military.
Shots rang out after one Morsi supporter tried to hang a picture of the ousted leader on barbed wire outside the headquarters, said the AFP correspondent.
He was warned twice by members of the Republican Guard not to approach the building before they started shooting.
Gunfire could then be heard from both directions, and security forces also later used tear gas.
Morsi, who has not been seen since Wednesday, had issued a defiant call for supporters to protect his elected “legitimacy”, in a recorded speech aired hours after his removal. The military had said it supported the right to peaceful protest, but warned against violence and acts of civil disobedience such as blocking roads. Clashes also broke out in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, hours after chief justice Adly Mansour, 67, was sworn in as interim president until new elections.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced Morsi’s overthrow on Wednesday night, citing his inability to end a deepening political crisis, as dozens of armoured personnel carriers streamed onto the streets of the capital.
The African Union suspended Egypt in response to Morsi’s ouster, after Middle Eastern governments welcomed the military’s intervention in varying degrees, with war-hit Syria calling it a “great achievement”.
The pan-African bloc’s Peace and Security Council “decided to suspend the participation of Egypt in AU activities until the restitution of constitutional order”, said an official statement.
The AU met Friday at its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to discuss the political crisis in Egypt, following Morsi’s removal by the army on Wednesday.