179 Held over Deadly Clashes as Calm Returns to Cairo

Egypt's military prosecution on Saturday ordered 179 people be detained over deadly clashes between troops and anti-military protesters in Cairo, a military source told Agence France Presse.

Following the arrest of 320 people after Friday's clashes outside the defense ministry in Cairo, the prosecution "has decided to hold 179 people, including 13 women, for 15 days pending investigation," the source said.

After five hours of questioning overnight, the detainees were accused of assaulting army officers and soldiers, assembling in a military zone, and preventing members of the armed forces of carrying out their work, the source said. They all denied the charges.

Calm returned to Cairo on Saturday after Egypt's military rulers imposed an overnight curfew around the defense ministry following the fierce clashes between troops and protesters that killed two people.

The clashes erupted just three weeks ahead of Egypt's first presidential election since a popular uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak last year.

On Saturday morning, after the curfew ended at 0500 GMT, the protests had subsided in the area surrounding the defense ministry, while soldiers and armored personnel carriers blocked off a road leading to the ministry.

Officials at Al-Zahra University hospital said on Friday they received two people who died in the skirmishes outside the ministry. A frontline medic group said they died of gunshot wounds.

The health ministry reported one death and said he was a conscript soldier.

At least 296 people were also hurt in the clashes, the health ministry said in a statement, including 131 treated in hospital.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had imposed the curfew starting from 2100 GMT, and pledged in a statement to "decisively confront" any attempts to break the curfew.

Earlier on Friday, military police charged the protesters, chasing them down side streets near the ministry on foot and in military vehicles, firing birdshot and assault rifles into the air amid chaotic scenes.

A blanket of thick smoke engulfed Abbassiya square, where several thousand secular and Islamist protesters had gathered, some marching there from Cairo's Tahrir Square, to denounce the ruling military council.

The clashes began when some protesters threw rocks at the military police, prompting troops to respond with water cannon and later tear gas.

The police, their shields in one hand, hurled rocks back at the protesters, who used metal sheets from construction sites to protect themselves.