Security stepped up after clashes kill 49
Nearly 50 people died in weekend clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt's military, as media outlets yesterday hailed rallies urging the army chief to run for the presidency.
And Egypt's interim president Adly Mansour yesterday said his government will hold a presidential poll this year before parliamentary elections, in a move seen to benefit Sisi.
Three years after Egyptians rose up to demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, thousands of demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday chanted slogans backing another military man, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as police clashed with Islamists and activists elsewhere.
The health ministry said 49 people were killed when security forces moved to disperse protests across the country by supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and activists who spearheaded the 2011 uprising.
The police arrested 1,079 "rioters," said the interior ministry.
Morsi was ousted by the military in July following mass protests calling on him to step down.
Since then, his supporters have been staging near-daily protests calling for his reinstatement, despite a crackdown that has killed more than 1,000 people and imprisoned thousands.
Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement has been already banned as a terrorist group in December after a suicide bombing killed 15 people in a police headquarters north of Cairo.
Militant attacks have also killed scores of Egyptian soldiers and policemen since Morsi's ouster, especially in the Sinai.
Yesterday, armed assailants opened fire on a military bus in the North Sinai, killing four soldiers near a military checkpoint prompting a warning from the army that it would eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood, which it blames for much of Egypt's political violence.
Five soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in the North Sinai on Saturday. The Ansar Beit al-Madqis group claimed responsibility.
The army has poured troops in the mountainous and underdeveloped peninsula, which borders the Palestinian Gaza strip and Israel, to combat the growing militancy.
Security was beefed up across Cairo yesterday.
Roads leading to police stations were sealed off, two days after four bombs exploded in the capital, including a massive blast outside police headquarters. The attacks, which were also claimed by Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, killed six people.
Private and state-run media have hailed "the fight against terrorism" led by the security forces.
yesterday, they welcomed demonstrations organised a day earlier in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square in support of the military-installed authorities, seeing in them "the people's challenge to terrorism".
Thousands showed up to call on army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general behind Morsi's ouster, to run for the presidency. The turnout was lower than the June 30 mass protests demanding Morsi step down.
Sisi has previously indicated he could run for the presidency if there is enough "popular demand".
Meanwhile, Egypt's ambassador and his staff have left Libya for security reasons after the kidnapping of five of their colleagues, the foreign ministry said yesterday.
"The ambassador and more than 50 staff and diplomats of the Egyptian embassy left Tripoli on Saturday evening," ministry spokesman Saeed Lassoued told AFP.
The evacuation had been decided on security grounds, he said, as Libyan authorities worked to secure the release of the abducted diplomats.
Justice Minister Salah al-Marghani has implicitly linked the kidnappings to the arrest in Egypt on Friday of a prominent former Libyan rebel commander who fought in the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
Kidnappers seized Egypt's cultural attache and three other embassy staff on Saturday, a day after a group snatched another Egyptian official in the city.
With growing insecurity in post-revolt Libya, authorities have struggled to integrate rebel groups which helped topple Gaddafi into the regular security forces.
Some militias have carved out their own fiefdoms, each with its own ideology and regional allegiances.
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