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Toll from Egypt clashes reaches one dead, more than 200 wounded

Arab World Materials 9 February 2013 22:09 (UTC +04:00)

The toll from Egypt's latest clashes between police and anti-government protesters reached one dead and 216 wounded, the government said on Saturday, DPA reported.

In Friday's violence, secular-minded opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi rallied in Cairo and other cities, hurling rocks and petrol bombs at police in the capital.

One dead person, yet to be identified, was later found outside a Cairo presidential palace, the semi-official al-Ahram newspaper reported online, citing Health Ministry spokesman Ahmed Omar.

Clashes erupted Friday outside the presidential compound in Cairo's north-eastern quarter of Heliopolis, near security buildings in Alexandria and in the Nile Delta city of Gharbia.

Police arrested 89 people, an Interior Ministry official said - eight in Cairo, 31 in Alexandria and 50 in Gharbia.

The protesters accuse Morsi of tightening his Muslim Brotherhood group's grip on power and failing to stop police abuses.

Islamists charge that the opposition is seeking to unseat Egypt's first democratically president.

Nearly 60 people have been killed in anti-government protests across Egypt in the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, Prosecutor General Talaat Abdullah referred 26 people to the Criminal Court on terrorism-related charges, the first such case since Morsi took office in June.

The defendants, including a Tunisian national, are charged with planning terrorist attacks on state institutions and seeking to overthrow the government to set up a jihadist regime.

No date has been set for the start of the trial.

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