Thousands of supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsy marched through Cairo and cities across Egypt on Friday to demand his reinstatement, the movement's biggest show of defiance since hundreds of protesters were killed two weeks ago.
Violence appeared to be limited, by the standards of the army crackdown on Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood, as the marchers defied warnings that the security forces massed at key intersections would open fire if protests turned violent.
Although most marches passed without major incident, a security source said there had been at least six deaths and 190 injuries, and that police fired teargas at protesters in Cairo's Mohandiseen district.
Friday's demonstrators appeared to have chosen to hold numerous scattered protests and to avoid Cairo's bigger squares, where police and tanks were deployed in force, or the scenes of earlier protests such as the pro-Morsy street camps where security forces shot dead more than 600 people on 14 August.
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!"
By mid-afternoon, thousands were marching in several Cairo districts and suburbs calling for the return of the elected government.
Soldiers were joined by helmeted police in black uniforms and bulletproof vests, armed with tear gas guns and semi-automatic rifles, at checkpoints near the protests. They blocked access to one of the bridges over the Nile.
In Egypt's second city, Alexandria, a total of more than 10,000 protesters took part in several separate demonstrations.
Marches were also held in several cities in the Nile Delta including Tanta and Fayoum, the three Suez Canal cities of Suez, Ismailia and Port Said, and in the southern city of Assiut.
State television showed little or no footage of the marches, but the Muslim Brotherhood's London press office circulated an email with links to video streams from what it said were protests on Friday in 15 districts of Cairo, as well as 32 more in other towns and cities across Egypt.
