Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi shout slogans against the military and the interior ministry during a protest march toward Mohandessin in Cairo, Friday. — Reuters CAIRO — Tens of thousands of supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi 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 Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, as the marchers defied warnings that the security forces massed at key intersections would open fire if protests turned violent. The Health Ministry said three people were killed in various incidents. A ministry official in Port Said, on the Suez Canal, said one protester was killed in clashes The army-backed government has arrested most of the leaders of the Brotherhood since Morsi was toppled by the military on July 3, suffocating protests and all but silencing the movement that ruled Egypt for a year. Friday's demonstrators appeared to have chosen to avoid bigger squares, where police and tanks were deployed in force, or the scenes of earlier protests such as the pro-Morsi street camps where security forces shot dead more than 600 people on Aug. 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!” 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. 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 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. Many of Friday's protesters wore T-shirts or carried placards bearing a hand giving the four-fingered salute of the protest movement, and chanted its slogan, “We are all Rabaa” — a reference to the main protest vigil outside the Rabaa Al-Adawiya mosque where hundreds were killed on Aug. 14. In the city of Fayoum, the private television channel CBC showed footage of a female Brotherhood supporter in a black head-to-toe veil, leading a march of veiled women and carrying a placard reading “Where did legitimacy go?” — Agencies
