Heavy clashes erupted nationwide on Friday following calls from the Anti-Coup Alliance, a coalition supporting former president Mohamed Morsi, to launch a series of week-long protests.
The violence has so far seen dozens of arrests nationwide and left 14 injured at the time of writing, according to the Ministry of Health, as well as one death.
The victim was a 10-year-old child killed by gun violence on Friday during clashes between Morsi-supporters and residents of Awal Al-Soor district in Suez, where a 40-year-man also sustained facial injuries.
Suez raged in clashes on Friday as fights erupted in Awal Al-Soor, Abu Al-Hasm, Al-Nil Street, Al-Tera’a and Al-Arba’ein areas. Aswat Masriya reported that army forces intervened with teargas to separate pro-Morsi protesters and residents.
Five injuries were reported in Damietta’s Ezbet Al-Borg area when residents fought with a pro-Morsi march. State-owned Al-Ahram reported four injuries in the pro-Morsi’s lines during the clashes, in which melee weapons and rocks were used.
In Cairo, police forces fired teargas inside the Al-Azhar University dorm in Nasr City to stop pro-Morsi protesters from demonstrating outside the dorm in response to a rock-throwing fight between area residents and students across the dorm’s walls.
One student had already been killed in clashes between Al-Azhar University students and security forces in the university dorm on Wednesday night.
Elsewhere in Nasr City, according to eyewitnesses, a pro-Morsi march attacked security forces located in El-Nozha commercial street. Another march from Al-Iman mosque joined the pro-Morsi protesters and the fight continued, police forces used teargas to disperse the crowd, while the protesters responded with rocks. Morsi supporters, then, threw molotov cocktails into the metro cars of El-Nozha station, setting them on fire with passengers still inside. No serious injuries were reported as a result of the fire.
Police forces confiscated a machine gun and arrested four people after they had destroyed four cars in the neighbourhood, including a police vehicle.
The destruction of the vehicles came after fierce fighting between residents and a pro-Morsi march behind the Workers’ University on Al-Nasr Road.
The Anti-Coup Alliance claimed that security forces shot teargas on a pro-Morsi march heading to Rabaa Al-Adaweya square, where Morsi supporters had held the sit-in that was dispersed on 14 August.
Army forces have blocked Al-Merghani Street in Heliopolis at the area over Al-Orouba tunnel to guard against any pro-Morsi marches approaching the street leading to the presidential palace. Clashes in the northeast of the city were ongoing at the time of writing.
Minor clashes were also reported in the eastern Cairo districts of Al-Zaytoun and Al-Matariya, and Maadi district in Southern Cairo.
On the banks of the Suez Canal, police forces dispersed a pro-Morsi march in Ismailia’s Al-Sheikh Zayed district in downtown after they chanted against the army, according to Al-Ahram.
The march was dispersed near to the spot where a police officer was gunned down on Thursday.
Security forces succeeded in controlling clashes in the Sidi Bishr district in Alexandria, which began when pro-Morsi demonstrators, according to media reports, destroyed cars displaying posters of Defence Minister Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi.
The Anti-Coup Alliance had called for week-long protests under the slogan “The Massacre of the Century” in reference to the violent dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in. The protests are meant to mark 100 days since the event.
