At least 15 dead after shooting in Cairo-sources

Cairo, July 8 – At least 15 people were killed on Monday in Cairo, medical sources said, when the Muslim Brotherhood said shots were fired at supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi near the military building where he is being held.

The Egyptian military said "a terrorist group" had tried to storm the building. One army officer had been killed and 40 wounded, the military said.

Murad Ali of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said 34 Mursi supporters had been killed. He said shooting broke out in the early morning while Islamists staged a sit-in outside the Republican Guard barracks.

Al Jazeera's Egypt news channel broadcast footage of what appeared to be five men killed in the violence, and medics applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation to an unconscious man at a makeshift clinic at a nearby pro-Mursi sit-in.

Ambulances were shown driving to and from the clinic.

The military overthrew Mursi last Wednesday after mass nationwide demonstrations led by youth activists demanding his resignation. The Brotherhood denounced the intervention as a coup and vowed peaceful resistance against the "usurper authorities".

The ultra-conservative Islamist Nour party, which backed the military action, said it had withdrawn from negotiations to form a new interim government in protest at what it called the "massacre of the Republican Guard".

"We've announced our withdrawal from all tracks of negotiations as a first response," Nader Bakar, spokesman for Egypt's second biggest Islamist party, said on Facebook.

 Reuters