Tensions high after thousands march in Cairo

Aljazeera 17 hours ago

Thousands of Egyptians have marched towards the presidential palace in Cairo for another day of demonstrations against the government, while thousands of his backers gathered for a funeral of two men killed in recent clashes.

As many as 10,000 protesters who were penned behind a barrier at the palace broke through barricades on Friday evening, climbing onto army tanks and waving flags as they chanted slogans against President Mohamed Morsi.

Republican Guard soldiers did not engage with the protesters who broke through the barrier, and protesters, in turn, did not attack them. Morsi was not at the palace.

Morsi's supporters, meanwhile, were teargassed when they attempted to storm the studios of private television news channels they deemed to be biased against the president.

The protests on Friday came as the country's main opposition groups rejected Morsi's call for a national political dialogue to resolve the political crisis.

Rival rallies were also held in Alexandria and Luxor, and some violence was reported from a demonstration outside a Muslim Brotherhood office in the Nile Delta city of Kom Hamada. Protests also took place in Mahallah and Assiut.

In an overnight address to the nation, Morsi pledged to forge on with a controversial constitutional referendum process.

The president condemned the street violence that has gripped the capital following protests against an earlier decree that put presidential orders beyond judicial review.

He called the recent violence "regrettable", and blamed it on "infiltrators" funded by unnamed third parties.

Rejecting Morsi's call for dialogue, Ahmed Said, one of the leading members of the opposition coalition, who also heads the liberal Free Egyptians Party, said: "The National Salvation Front [NSF] is not taking part in the dialogue, that is the official stance."

Khaled Daood, a spokesperson for the NSF, told Al Jazeera the coalition was demanding that Morsi delay the vote on the draft constitution and rescind his presidential decree granting himself greater powers before any dialogue.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition leader whose party is a member of the NSF, also urged political forces to shun the dialogue process. The liberal Wafd party added its voice to that call.