More deaths in Cairo, as Imam calls for military to stop shooting protestors

As thousands rallied for a fifth straight day in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, epicentre of the Arab Spring uprising which overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak last February, an opinion poll found that 43 percent of Egyptians thought the ruling military was trying to slow down or reverse its gains.

In the unusually strong statement from Al-Azhar, grand imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb said that any dialogue "stained with blood is doomed and its fruit will be bitter."

Al-Azhar "calls on the police leadership to immediately issue orders not to point their weapons at demonstrators... no matter what the reasons," Tayyeb said in a recorded address broadcast on state television.

It calls "on the armed forces to throw all their weight behind preventing confrontations between one people," he added.

"Al-Azhar also calls on our children in Tahrir Square and all the squares of Egypt to maintain the peaceful nature of their revolution, despite the sacrifices and difficulties they face and to protect all private and public property."

The statement came as three more people died in clashes with police in and around Tahrir Square, a medic said, and a fourth was shot dead in the northwestern city of Mersa Matruh when security forces clashed with demonstrators trying to storm a police station, state media said.

Clashes were also reported in the port city of Alexandria, where hundreds of people protested outside the military headquarters, calling for the transfer of power to a civilian administration.

Troops fired tear gas to disperse a separate demonstration at the security directorate, the official MENA news agency said, adding that an unspecified number of injured protesters were taken to a nearby field hospital.

The violence came despite a pledge last Tuesday by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's long-time defence minister now in charge of the country, that the military does not seek indefinite rule.