Supporters of Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi have clashed with security forces on the streets of Cairo amid a continuing political deadlock over who would be the country’s interim prime minister .
Activists of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood said police stormed a peaceful sit-in and fired tear gas at the gathering. There are unconfirmed reports of casualties.
They were demanding the reinstatement of Morsi, who was ousted by a military coup last week.
The latest violence came even as a lack of consensus blocked the interim leadership’s efforts to pick a prime minister.
Reports said interim president Adly Mansour was leaning towards appointing centre-left lawyer Ziad Bahaa Eldin as prime minister, after members of the Nour Party expressed concern at an earlier suggestion that the job could go to Nobel Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
But some Nour Party members expressed concern that the candidates had political affiliations.
Younes Makhyoun, Nour’s leader, told Reuters: “Both are from the same party, the National Salvation Front, this is rejected. I fear it would be going from one exclusive approach to another,” referring to accusations that the Brotherhood tried to monopolise power.
Meanwhile, the popular Salafist preacher Yaser Borhamy told Al Jazeera that he has nothing against Bahaa el-Din, but “they would rather have someone who does not belong to a political party – a pure technocrat if such thing exists,” said Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid.
She said others from Al Nour had been seen on local media channels saying they approve of Bahaa el-Din.
AFP reported that the prime minister would be named on Monday, quoting the interim president’s adviser.
Nour had signed up to the army’s roadmap for the political transition, giving Islamist legitimacy to an overthrow rejected by Islamic parties aligned to Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood.
That has given it leverage over the choice of the next prime minister.
But already accused by other Islamists of betraying their cause, Nour must tread carefully to avoid losing support among its core constituency.
Brotherhood defiant
Unlike Nour, its bigger rival the Brotherhood has said it would have no part in the military-backed political process.
Thousands of its supporters are camped out in a suburb of northeastern Cairo, with chants often heard of “coup, coup, coup!”.
The army has denied it staged a coup, saying instead it was merely enforcing the will of the people after mass protests on June 30 calling for Morsi’s resignation.
The pro-Morsi camp is refusing to budge until its leader is restored – an unlikely outcome.
On the other side of the political divide, hundreds of thousands of Morsi’s opponents poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the cradle of the popular uprising to oust him.
On Sunday night, a carnival atmosphere took hold, and a troupe of folk musicians played darabukka drums and mizmar flutes as others danced and let off fireworks.
Washington has not condemned the military takeover or called it a coup, prompting suspicion within the Brotherhood that it tacitly supports the overthrow.
The United States president, Barack Obama, has ordered a review to determine whether annual assistance of $1.5bn, most of which goes to the Egyptian military, should be cut as required by law if a country’s military deposes a democratically elected leader.
Elsewhere, gunmen shot dead an Egyptian soldier during an attack on a checkpoint in the restive north of Sinai, a police official said.
The attack near the town of El-Arish on Sunday, where Islamists this week stormed the provincial headquarters, raised the banner of such fighters.