Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi shout slogans against the military and interior ministry during a protest in front of Al Istkama mosque at Giza Square, south of Cairo, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Egypt’s army-backed rulers met yesterday to discuss their bloody confrontation with deposed President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood amid contrasting proposals for compromise and a fight to the death.

In a televised speech to military and police officers, army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to crack down on anyone using violence, but also struck an apparently inclusive note, telling Morsi’s supporters: “There is room for everyone in Egypt.”

The Brotherhood, under huge pressure since police stormed its protest camps in Cairo and killed hundreds of its supporters on Wednesday, staged several more marches across the country to demand the reinstatement of Morsi, ousted by Sisi on July 3.

Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, is grappling with the worst bout of internal bloodshed in its modern history, just 30 months after President Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow was hailed as heralding democratic change across a region ruled by autocrats.

Army chief tells Morsi partisans Egypt has room for all

Seventy-nine people died and 549 were wounded on Saturday in political violence around the country, state news agency Mena said yesterday, quoting the government.

That pushed the death toll since Wednesday to 830, including 70 police and soldiers.

It was not immediately clear how Saturday’s deaths had occurred. Previously only one person had been reported killed.

On Saturday, Morsi supporters exchanged fire with security forces who eventually cleared protesters from a central Cairo mosque where they had sought refuge from clashes the day before.

The clamp down has earned the military rulers criticism from Egypt’s major ally, the US and the European Union, but support from wealthy Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, which fear the spread of Brotherhood ideology to the Gulf monarchies.

Before the Cabinet met, the liberal deputy prime minister, Ziad Bahaa el-Din, had floated a conciliatory proposal, advocating an end to a state of emergency declared last week, political participation for all parties and guarantees of human rights, including the right to free assembly.

But his initiative seemed at odds with the stance of Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, who suggested outlawing the 85-year-old Brotherhood, which would effectively force it underground.

“There will be no reconciliation with those whose hands that have been stained with blood and who turned weapons against the state and its institutions,” Beblawi told reporters on Saturday.

The Cabinet meeting lasted about four hours, but ended with no immediate announcement of any major decision.

A middle-ranking security officer, who asked not to be named, said no political proposals or foreign condemnation would be allowed to deflect the suppression of the Brotherhood.

“We have the people’s support. Everybody is against them now as they see the group as an armed terrorist organisation with no future as a political power,” the officer said.

The capital’s frenetic streets, unusually empty in the past few days, were returning to normal, although the army kept several big squares closed and enforced a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

At night, soldiers standing by armoured personnel carriers man checkpoints and vigilantes inspect cars for weapons.

Banks and the stock market reopened for the first time since Wednesday’s carnage, and shares plunged 3.9 per cent.

“As long as we have bloodshed on the streets, it takes away any reason for foreign and regional investors to buy in Egypt,” said Amer Khan, director at Shuaa Asset Management in Dubai.

Egypt’s new rulers blame the Muslim Brotherhood, which won five successive national polls held after Mubarak’s fall in 2011, but which drew charges that it was incompetent and bent on consolidating its own power during Morsi’s year in office.

Sisi said: “We will not stand idle in face of the destruction and torching of the country, the terrorising of the people and the sending of a wrong image to the Western media that there is fighting in the streets.”

Brotherhood leaders accuse the military and other state institutions of sabotaging their time in government. In calibrated rebukes to the army, the US has delayed delivery of four F-16 fighters and scrapped a joint military exercise, but it has not halted its $1.55 billion a year in aid to Egypt, mostly to finance US-made arms supplies.

But yesterday, a bipartisan series of US lawmakers – several of them reversing earlier stances from before the crackdown – said on TV news programmes that Washington should suspend the aid.