Cairo - XINHUA
At least two people were killed and several others injured on Friday in Cairo and Fayoum provinces in Egypt during clashes between scrutiny men and protesters supporting ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
One man was killed and two others were wounded during pro-Morsi protests in Ain Shams district in the capital Cairo according to state-run Ahram news website.
On the other hand, official MENA news agency said that an 18- year-old student was killed and two policemen were injured in similar confrontations during protests in Fayoum's Etsa city, some 85 km southern Cairo.
"We received two dead bodies; one at Heliopolis Hospital in Cairo and another at Etsa Hospital in Fayoum, but we cannot confirm now the reason for their deaths," Mohamed Sultan, head of emergency care unit at the Health Ministry, told Xinhua.
Since Morsi's removal by the military in July, 2013 and the following crackdown on his loyalists that left about 1,000 killed and thousands more arrested, supporters of the ousted Islamist president have been holding weekly protests denouncing his removal as "a coup," yet the protests have been getting smaller due to massive security campaigns.
Meanwhile, extremist groups killed hundreds through terrorist attacks against police and military personnel and premises in the Sinai Peninsula and other provinces across the country over the past year in response to Morsi's removal and the crackdown on his loyalists.
The Muslim Brotherhood group, most of whose members are in custody including Morsi himself, has been blacklisted by the Egyptian authorities as a terrorist group and its members were also banned by a court ruling from running for presidential and parliamentary elections.
Ex-military chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who led Morsi's ouster following mass protests against his one-year rule, was elected in June as Egypt's new president.