adminAl Jazeera’s Matthew Cassel, reporting from near the military barracks, said several dozen people were also injured by shotgun pellets fired by the army.
“One protester broke away from the rally to stick a pro-Morsi poster on the barbed-wire around the barracks. He was shot in the head with birdshot,” he said.
Security forces were cordoning the Republican Guard barracks, but it was not immediately clear who had opened fire.
An army spokesman denied that troops opened fire on supporters, saying that soldiers were using only blank rounds and teargas.
It was unclear whether security forces other than the army were present.
The interior ministry also denied that people were killed in the clashes outside the Republican Guards club.
Also yesterday, Adly Mansour, the newly-appointed interim head of state, dissolved parliament by decree, state television said.
Only the upper house, the Shura Council, had remained active after the lower house was dissolved by military-led authorities shortly before Morsi was elected a year ago.
State TV also said that Mansour had appointed Mohamed Ahmed Farid as head of intelligence. He replaces Mohamed Raafat Shehata, a Morsi appointee, who becomes national security adviser to Mansour.
In Nasr City in the Egyptian capital, thousands of supporters of Morsi gathered after Friday prayer to protest against his ouster.
Senior Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed ElBeltagy told the protestors: “Your brothers are now at the Republican Guards trying to help president Morsi get out. Your brothers are being fired at with live bullets.
“I call on the military is to remove the defence minister and to bring president Morsi back to power. We are going to the republican guards as martyrs in million. Today, president Morsi should come back to power,” ElBeltagy said.
The coalition on Thursday urged people to take part in a “Friday of Rejection” protest following weekly prayers. The call is being seen as a test of whether Morsi still has a support base in the country, and how the army will deal with it.
Morsi, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president, belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood movement .
While the military coup came in the wake of mass protests seeking Morsi’s dismissal, the ex-president’s supporters are angry and have denounced the army’s intervention. — Al Jazeera/AFP.
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