Seven killed in overnight Cairo clashes

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Seven people were killed and 261 wounded in overnight clashes in Cairo between supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and security forces, health officials said on Tuesday.

Two people died in clashes around the central Ramses area near Tahrir Square, while another five were killed in Giza, emergency services chief Mohammed Sultan told AFP, adding that security force personnel were among the injured.

Health ministry official Khaled al-Khatib gave the same toll, cited by the official MENA news agency.

Khatib said 124 of the 261 people injured were still in hospital.

Thousands of pro-Morsi protesters took to the streets of Cairo on Monday evening after the Ramadan iftar meal to demand the return of the Islamist President, who has been in custody since hours after the July 3 coup.

Some of them blocked the bridge on October over the Nile in the heart of Cairo, where security forces fired tear gas to drive them back, an AFP correspondent reported.

The protesters responded by hurling rocks at the security forces, triggering fresh volleys of tear gas, with clashes continuing in adjacent Ramses Square and elsewhere late into the night.

The clashes were the first in the Egyptian capital since dozens of pro-Morsi demonstrators were shot dead outside an elite military headquarters on Monday of last week.

The latest deaths brings to more than 100 the number of people killed in Egypt since the coup, according to a tally of confirmed deaths compiled by AFP.

The bloodshed came just hours after under secretary of state Bill Burns, on the first visit to Egypt by a senior US official since Morsi’s ouster, called for an end to the violence rocking the Arab world’s most populous nation.