Cairo mosque under siege as Islamists plan new protests

Morsi supporters throw stones as they clash with security officers in Cairo's Ramses Square Cairo – Arab Today Egyptian security forces have surrounded a mosque in Cairo where 100s of anti-government protesters are thought to have barricaded themselves in, in a standoff that has been ongoing since Friday night. The news comes as protesters plan new marches after a day of clashes that left 83 dead and saw over 1000 alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters arrested, as Egyptian forces continued their crackdown on protests calling for ousted president Mohammed Morsi to be reinstalled.
Television footage showed troops inside the al-Fath mosque mosque, in Ramses Square, apparently trying to persuade protesters to give themselves up.
Security forces offered  safe passage for female protesters in the mosque overnight, but the women refused to leave without the men who the forces demanded come for questioning, al-Jazeera reported.
Protesters want assurances they will not be arrested or attacked by hostile crowds gathered outside, according to a protester inside the mosque who spoke to AFP.
An al-Jazeera correspondent described the crowd as “baying” for the people inside the mosque and said members had attacked Italian journalists on Saturday.
Protesters say they were attacked with tear gas by security forces outside the building, and one woman reportedly died from tear-gas inhalation, al-Jazeera reported.
One protester told AFP there were over 1000 protesters in the mosque, which had previously held bodies of more than 20 people killed in Friday’s clashes.
Another said men had barricaded the doors after “thugs” tried to storm building.
But security officials quoted by the official MENA news agency said that "armed elements" had been shooting at security forces and police from inside the mosque.
Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) pleaded for another "massacre" to be avoided after at least 578 people were killed across the country on Wednesday when police cleared protest camps set up by loyalists of the former president, deposed by the military on July 3.
It was not possible to verify the numbers in the mosque independently.
The latest unrest started as Morsi supporters emerged from mosques in the capital to protest in what they billed as a "Friday of anger" following Wednesday's bloodbath.
Violence erupted almost immediately, with gunshots ringing out in Cairo and security forces firing tear gas.
In the capital, a man leapt off a bridge near a police station to escape shooting as police armoured vehicles advanced on protesters, witnesses said.
An AFP correspondent counted at least 19 bodies in one Cairo mosque, while witnesses said more than 20 corpses had been laid out in another.
Elsewhere in Egypt, 10 people were killed by security forces and dozens injured in the canal city of Suez when they gathered to protest in defiance of the curfew.
Their deaths brought to 83 the number killed in nationwide violence although the FJP spoke of 130 dead in Cairo alone.
Marches were also reported in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in Beni Sueif and Fayyum, south of Cairo, and in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada.
The demonstrations ended shortly after a night-time curfew came into effect but Anti-Coup Alliance spokesman Gehad El-Haddad told AFP that Morsi loyalists would hold "daily anti-coup rallies" going forward.
The interior ministry said "the number of Muslim Brotherhood elements arrested reached 1004," including 558 in Cairo alone.
The Egyptian cabinet issued a defiant statement after the unrest, saying it was confronting a "terrorist plot."
"The cabinet affirms that the government, the armed forces, the police and the great people of Egypt are united in confronting the malicious terrorist plot by the Muslim Brotherhood," it said.
And the interior ministry, which authorised police to use live fire if government buildings came under attack, accused the Brotherhood of attacking police stations, saying it foiled attempts to storm buildings.
Additional source: AFP