Sporadic clashes outside Egypt presidential palace

CAIRO, Feb 3, 2013 (AFP) - Sporadic clashes broke out overnight between protesters demanding the ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and security forces outside the presidential palace, witnesses said on Sunday.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the confrontations which follow violent clashes on Friday outside the presidential palace that left one person dead. Late on Saturday several hundred mostly young protesters again gathered outside the compound and threw stones and petrol bombs at its walls, an AFP correspondent said.

One protester said they were there to pay homage to the young man killed on Friday, and they chanted “Leave!” and “The people want the regime to fall!” -- slogans used two years earlier to oust veteran president Hosni Mubarak. In Friday's clashes, a 23-year-old was shot dead and 91 people were injured, a medic said, and the interior ministry said 15 of its men were wounded by birdshot. Security forces deployed outside the palace grounds fired tear gas late on Saturday when a group of protesters tried to storm one of the gates, the witnesses said, but republican guards inside the compound did not intervene.

“We no longer respond to provocation from certain protesters outside the palace,” the commander of the guards, General Mohammed Ahmad Zaki, was quoted as saying by the state-run MENA news agency.

The main opposition National Salvation Front (NSF), meanwhile, called for the resignation of Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim after a video showing a naked man being beaten by police went viral on the Internet.

In Friday's clashes, a 23-year-old was shot dead and 91 people were injured

Egyptian protesters throw stones towards the presidential palace in Cairo on February 1, 2013, as people took to the streets across the country in a show of opposition to Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.