Islamic supporters vowed to protest today after Egypt's military moved swiftly against top Muslim Brotherhood figures, targeting the backbone of support for ousted President Mohammed Morsi.

In the most dramatic step, authorities arrested the group's revered leader from a seaside villa and flew him by helicopter to detention in the capital.

With a top judge newly sworn in as interim president to replace Mr Morsi, the crackdown poses an immediate test to the new army-backed leadership's promises to guide Egypt to democracy - how to include the 83-year-old fundamentalist group.

Hosni Mubarak and previous authoritarian regimes banned the group and after his fall, the newly-legalised Brotherhood shot to power in elections, with veteran member Mr Morsi becoming the country's first freely-elected president.

Now the group is reeling under a huge backlash from a public that says the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies abused their electoral mandate. The military forced Mr Morsi out on Wednesday after millions of Egyptians turned out in four days of protests demanding he be removed.

Adly Mansour, head of the Supreme Constititonal Court, with which Mr Morsi had repeated confrontations, was sworn in as interim president.

In his inaugural speech, broadcast nationwide, he said the anti-Morsi protests that began June 30 had "corrected the path of the glorious revolution of January 25", referring to the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak. He also praised the army, police, media and judiciary for standing against the Brotherhood.

Furious over what it calls a military coup against democracy, the Brotherhood said it would not work with the new leadership. It and harder-line Islamist allies called for a wave of protests today, dubbing it the "Friday of Rage" and vowing to escalate if the military did not back down.

There are widespread fears of Islamist violence in retaliation for Mr Morsi's removal and already some former militant extremists have vowed to fight.

Suspected militants opened fire at four sites in northern Sinai, targeting two military checkpoints, a police station and el-Arish airport, where military aircraft are stationed, security officials said. The military and security responded to the attacks and one soldier was killed and three were injured.

Brotherhood officials urged their followers to keep their protests peaceful. "We declare our complete rejection of the military coup staged against the elected president and the will of the nation," it said in a statement, read by senior cleric Abdel-Rahman el-Barr to a crowd outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo.

"We refuse to participate in any activities with the usurping authorities."

The Rabia al-Adawiya protesters plan to march to the Ministry of Defence today.

The Brotherhood condemned the crackdown, including the shutdown on Wednesday night of its television channel, Misr25, its newspaper and three pro-Morsi Islamist TV stations. The military, it said, was returning Egypt to the practices of "the dark, repressive, dictatorial and corrupt ages".

A military statement last night appeared to signal a wider wave of arrests was not in the offing. A spokesman, Col Ahmed Mohammed Ali, said in a Facebook posting that that the army and security forces would not take "any exceptional or arbitrary measures" against any political group.

Many of the Brotherhood's opponents want senior figures prosecuted for what they say were crimes committed during Mr Morsi's rule, just as Mubarak was prosecuted for protester deaths during the 2011 uprising. In the past year, dozens were killed in clashes with Brotherhood supporters and security forces.

But the swift moves raise perceptions of a revenge campaign against the Brotherhood.

The National Salvation Front, the top opposition political group during Mr Morsi's presidency and a key member of the coalition that worked with the military in his removal, criticiced the moves, saying: "We totally reject excluding any party, particularly political Islamic groups."

The Front has proposed one of its top leaders, Mohammed ElBaradei, to become prime minister of the interim cabinet, a post that will hold strong powers since Mr Mansour's presidency post is considered symbolic. Mr ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate who once headed the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, is considered Egypt's top reform advocate.

"Reconciliation is the name of the game, including the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to be inclusive," Munir Fakhry Abdel-Nour, a leading member of the group, said. "The detentions are a mistake."

He said the arrests appeared to be prompted by security officials' fears over possible calls for violence by Brotherhood leaders.

Mr Morsi has been detained in an unknown location since Wednesday night and at least a dozen of his top aides and advisers have been under what is described as "house arrest", though their locations are also unknown.

Besides the Brotherhood's top leader, General Guide Mohammed Badie, security officials have also arrested his predecessor Mahdi Akef and one of his two deputies, Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Saad el-Katatni, head of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, and ultra-conservative Salafi figure Hazem Abu Ismail, who has a considerable street following.

Authorities have also issued a wanted list for more than 200 Brotherhood members and leaders of other Islamist groups. Among them is Khairat el-Shater, another deputy of the general guide who is widely considered the most powerful figure in the Brotherhood.

The arrest of Gen Badie was a dramatic step, since even Mubarak and his predecessors had been reluctant to move against the group's top leader. The ranks of Brotherhood members across the country swear a strict oath of unquestioning allegiance to the general guide, vowing to "hear and obey". It has been decades since any Brotherhood general guide was put in prison.

Gen Badie and Mr el-Shater were widely believed by the opposition to be the real power in Egypt during Mr Morsi's tenure. Gen Badie was arrested late on Wednesday from a villa where he had been staying in the Mediterranean coastal city of Marsa Matrouh and flown by helicopter to Cairo, security officials said.