{{Islamist backers of Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi staged defiant rallies Friday and clashed with police in Cairo, after the government ordered their protest camps to be broken up.}}<\/p>\n
Police fired tear gas and birdshot at roughly 1,000 protesters who tried to set up a new camp outside a large media compound.<\/p>\n
The clashes erupted as US Under Secretary of State William Burns landed in Cairo, the latest international envoy on a mission to press Morsi’s backers and the interim government to resolve the standoff peacefully.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born head of the militant Al-Qaeda organisation, accused the United States of “plotting” Morsi’s overthrow with the Egyptian military and the country’s Christian minority.<\/p>\n
“Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged … with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi’s government,” he said in a 15-minute audio recording posted on militant Islamist forums.<\/p>\n
In his first comments since the July 3 coup, Zawahiri also attacked Morsi’s secular opposition and Coptic Christians, who he said wanted a secessionist state in Egypt, and called for a mass movement to install Islamic law.<\/p>\n
In Cairo, Morsi supporters began to march after Friday prayers, pouring out of several mosques in the capital.<\/p>\n
An early evening protest outside Cairo’s media production city descended into mayhem, with at least one protester wounded by birdshot.<\/p>\n
Police fired tear gas at protesters who had set up tents and brick fortifications outside the compound. The protesters responded with stones.<\/p>\n
A security source said protesters had “tried to storm” the compound, but the demonstrators said police fired tear gas when they tried to camp outside the compound.<\/p>\n
“I am a Muslim, not a terrorist,” they chanted.<\/p>\n
The interior ministry accused the protesters of firing birdshot, wounding a conscript, and said police made 31 arrests.<\/p>\n
Witnesses also reported clashes between residents in the Alf Maskan area and Morsi loyalists after they tried to set up a protest site.<\/p>\n
Morsi supporters announced Friday evening marches to several security facilities, including the Republican Guard headquarters, where more than 50 demonstrators were killed last month.<\/p>\n
While large crowds turned out to one march at the military intelligence headquarters, stopping short of the building and turning back after a brief protest, attempts to march to the Republican Guards appeared to have been called off.<\/p>\n
Military vehicles were stationed on at least two side streets from the key Rabaa al-Adawiya protest site, and on the way from the site to the Republican Guard facility.<\/p>\n
At a march on the state security police forces, protester Ward Abdel Moghny said demonstrators “went to them… to say we no longer fear you.”<\/p>\n
Morsi’s supporters have remained defiant in the face of mounting threats from the army-installed interim government.<\/p>\n
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