Muslim Brotherhood plans protest march as Egypt death toll mounts

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has said it planned to march in the capital, Cairo, reiterating it remained committed to a peaceful struggle, a day after hundreds of its supporters were killed in a bloody security crackdown in the capital.

"Marches are planned this afternoon from Al-Iman mosque to protest the deaths," the Islamist group said in a statement on Thursday even as the country remained in a state of emergency.

World leaders condemned the attack on protesters camped out in the Egyptian capital calling for reinstatement of Mohamed Morsi, country's first freely elected president, who was deposed by the army on July 3.

"We will always be non-violent and peaceful. We remain strong, defiant and resolved," Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad wrote on his Twitter feed.

"We will push (forward) until we bring down this military coup," he added.

Nationwide protests, including Alexandria and numerous towns and cities, erupted after the Cairo crackdown that left at least 525 people dead.

An Egyptian Health Ministry spokesman, Khaled el-Khateeb, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the number of injured in the previous day's violence had risen to 3,572.

Islamist supporters of former President Mohamed Mursi, ousted by the army on 3 July, clashed with police and troops who used bulldozers, teargas and live ammunition to clear two Cairo sit-ins that had become a hub of resistance to the military.

The capital and other areas hit by shocking violence were largely calm overnight, after the army-installed government declared a month-long state of emergency and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the capital and 10 other provinces.

But whether the powerful military can keep a lid on the fury felt by millions of Mursi's supporters, most of them from his Muslim Brotherhood movement, is unclear.

The country is bracing itself for more clashes and in Alexandria, Egypt's second biggest city, Islamist protesters were already on the move by early afternoon.

A military source said that while sit-ins like the main one outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo would no longer be tolerated, marches may be in spite of the state of emergency.

Funerals of those killed will also be held throughout the day, and on Friday, the main Muslim day of prayer, anger could spill on to the streets.