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Mursi backers defiant (AFP) / 12 July 2013 Tens of thousands of supporters of ousted president Mohammed Mursi gathered on Friday vowing to keep fighting for his reinstatement, as rival rallies defending his overthrow underlined Egypt’s bitter divisions. Supporters of Mohammed Mursi wave national flags during a rally outside Cairo’s Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque on Friday. — AFP The rallies come as Germany called for the release of Mursi, who is being held in a “safe place, for his safety” and has not yet been charged, according to the foreign ministry. Holding Egyptian flags and Korans, protesters gathered out-side the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City neighbourhood, chanting against the military and pledging allegiance to Mursi.  “We will continue to resist. We will stay one or two months, or even one or two years. We won’t leave here until our president, Mohammed Mursi, comes back,” influential Islamist leader Safwat Hegazi told the crowd. Hegazi demanded the reinstatement of Egypt’s first freely elected president, immediate parliamentary elections and a committee to oversee a plan for national reconciliation. Mursi supporters set up a field kitchen to cook Iftar for demonstrators. Thousands also massed in support of the ousted president outside the University of Cairo, watched over by a heavy security presence. Despite the turnouts and defiant mood, the gathering has been increasingly out of step with political developments as the interim authorities press ahead with forming a new government and Gulf states help support the faltering economy. The Muslim Brotherhood, the influential Islamist group from which Mursi emerged, is now in tatters, its leadership detained, on the run or keeping a low profile following Mursi’s July 3 overthrow by the military. Pro-Mursi protesters arrived from across the country to join hundreds already camped out at the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque. The anti-Mursi camp also called huge rallies after Friday in Tahrir Square and at the Ittihadiya presidential palace, with a mass iftar planned at sundown. In Tahrir Square, several dozen demonstrators gathered under a scorching midday sun, adamant that their numbers would rise later. “It is because of the heat and Ramadan, when we have a fast. During the day, people stay at home but this evening, people will come to Tahrir,” Gamal, 48, said. The rival rallies have raised fears of more of the violence that has shaken Egypt since the army removed Mursi after millions of demonstrators demanded his resignation. In the worst incident, clashes at an army building in Cairo on Monday killed 53 people, mostly Mursi supporters. The Brotherhood accuses the army of “massacring” its supporters, while the army says soldiers were attacked by “terrorists” and armed protesters.  On Friday, gunmen in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia killed a police conscript and wounded an officer when they tried to stop a vehicle the armed group was travelling in, MENA reported on Friday. The gunmen escaped, but security forces were tracking them down, Ismailiya police chief General Mohamed Eid told MENA. The restive Sinai peninsula, home to Egypt’s luxury Red Sea resorts, has been hit by a surge of violence, with militants killing a police officer in a rocket attack on a checkpoint early on Friday, officials said. A Coptic Christian man was found decapitated on Thursday five days after being kidnapped, and on Wednesday, two people died in an attack on a security checkpoint in the Sinai. Continue reading →