Thousands of supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi marched through Cairo and cities across Egypt yesterday to demand his reinstatement, in the movement’s biggest show of defiance since hundreds of protesters were killed two weeks ago.

Although most marches passed without major incident, three deaths were reported, and police fired teargas at protesters in Cairo’s Mohandiseen district. Demonstrators even massed around the presidential palace in the capital.

The army-backed government, which has shot dead hundreds of supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood since he was toppled by the military on July 3, had warned that forces posted at key intersections since the morning would open fire if protests turned violent.

Having arrested most of the Brotherhood’s leaders, it hoped by now to have suffocated the protests against its decision to force out and crush the movement that ruled Egypt for a year. But its prospects of presenting a return to normality looked to have been set back by live television pictures of teargas and burning tyres in Cairo, as well as the sheer number of separate marches that the well-organised Brotherhood managed to stage.

The Health Ministry said three people had been killed and 36 wounded in various incidents. A ministry official in Port Said, on the Suez Canal, said one protester had been killed and 21 injured there in clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents.

The demonstrators appeared mostly to have opted for numerous scattered protests, avoiding Cairo’s bigger squares or the scenes of earlier protests such as the pro-Morsi street camps where security forces shot dead more than 600 people on August 14.

Just after Friday prayers, around 500 protesters set off from central Cairo’s Sahib Rumi mosque, chanting: “Wake up, don’t be afraid, the army must leave”, “The Interior Ministry are thugs” and “Egypt is Islamic, not secular.”

In Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, a total of more than 10,000 protesters took part in several separate demonstrations.