Stone-throwing clashes broke out yesterday in the Egyptian city of Alexandria between Islamists and opposition protesters, on the eve of a highly charged referendum on a new constitution, witnesses and state media said.

Fifteen people were wounded, according to medics, and several cars set on fire in the violence in the Mediterranean city, Egypt’s second largest.

State TV showed at least one protester brandishing a sword.

Riot police quickly moved to separate the protesters, who clashed after a cleric urged worshippers to vote yes for the constitution.

Tensions are high over the staggered referendum, which is being held today and the following Saturday, after weeks of protests and violence between rival camps in Cairo that killed eight people and injured hundreds last week.

Rallies by both sides were taking place in Cairo yesterday.

A pro-constitution rally by the Muslim Brotherhood backing Islamist President Mohamed Morsi gathered more than 2,000 people, and separately, hundreds of Morsi’s opponents demonstrated outside his palace.

The protests were modest in size compared with mass rallies in recent weeks by the opposition that forced Morsi to give up sweeping powers, and huge protests by Islamists to show that the president had supporters.

Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-orthodox Salafist groups backing the draft charter have been campaigning for days for Egypt’s 51 million voters to approve it.

A senior Islamist official involved in drafting the charter, Amr Darrag, branded opposition attacks against the document an “unjust campaign to paint a lying picture of the constitution.”

Egypt’s mainly secular opposition has criticised the draft charter as divisive and a possible attempt by Islamists to introduce sharia-style law.

“We are confident that the Egyptian people will topple the Muslim Brotherhood’s constitution,” Amr Hamzawy, a leader of the opposition National Salvation Front said.

The opposition took out half-page advertisements in major independent dailies describing the charter as “a constitution that divides Egypt”. “It’s you who will pay the price if you vote ‘yes.’ ‘No’ to the constitution,” said an online campaign advertisement by the opposition April 6 youth movement.

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