Europe’s top diplomat pressed Egypt’s rulers yesterday to step back from a growing confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, two days after 80 of his supporters were gunned down in Cairo.

Raising the prospect of more bloodshed, the Muslim Brotherhood said it would march again on Interior Ministry offices across the country.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, became the first overseas envoy to visit Egypt since Saturday’s carnage, the second mass killing of Morsi supporters by security forces since the army ousted him on July 3.

The bloodshed has raised global anxiety that the army may move to crush the Brotherhood, a movement which emerged from decades in the shadows to win power in elections after Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

Ashton, on her second trip to Egypt since Morsi’s fall, met General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the army and the man behind the overthrow of Egypt’s first freely-elected president. She also held talks with deputy interim president and prominent liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei and interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy.

There were no immediate details on the talks. Earlier, Ashton said she would press for a “fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood”.

In comments carried by the Mena state news agency, ElBaradei said he had told Ashton that the new leadership was doing all in its power to “reach a peaceful way out of the current crisis, that preserves the blood of all Egyptians”.

Ashton was also meeting members of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political wing. Thousands of its supporters have camped out for a month at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northern Cairo, demanding Morsi’s reinstatement and defying threats by the