CAIRO (Updated) - Clashes around the Interior Ministry's premises between security forces and protesters continued for the second day in a row, leaving one dead and more than 1,400 injured, a spokesman of the Health Ministry said. “All the injured are in a stable condition. Most were hospitalised but could be discharged,” said Adel Adawy, an assistant of the Health Minister. Adawy added that most of the injured suffered from asphyxia due to tear gas inhalation, cuts and bone fractures. The Ministry of Interior dismissed rumours that it had withdrawn its forces from the Ministry and downtown areas. Protests were held in major cities across the country to demand the immediate ouster of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took power when president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February last year. The unrest comes amid mounting anger over football-related violence on Wednesday that left 74 people dead, with protesters blaming the ruling military and the police for allowing the deaths to happen. Protesters hurled rocks through clouds of tear gas and riot police fired live rounds around the Interior Ministry. Rocks and stones flew in all directions, as police vans repeatedly charged forward to fire the tear gas before retreating. A demonstrator and an army officer were reported dead in Cairo and in the city of Suez, two people were killed as police used live rounds to hold back crowds trying to break into a police station and fought in front of thestate security headquarters, witnesses and the ambulance authority said. Most of those killed in the Port Said football stadium on Wednesday night were crushed in a stampede and the government declared three days of mourning, but protesters hold the military-led authorities responsible. "We will stay until we get our rights. Did you see what happened in Port Said?" 22-year-old Abu Hanafy, who arrived from work on Thursday evening and decided to join the protest, told Reuters. The ministry in Cairo, an object of hatred for football fans who say lax policing was to blame for the stadium disaster, was still hemmed in by the street battles yesterday, though the ranks of protesters had thinned since Thursday night. An eyewitness heard firing and found gun pellets on the ground. A hard core of demonstrators had heaved aside a concrete barrier blocking a main road near the ministry overnight to get closer to the building. "We pulled it down with our bare hands," said Abdul-Ghani Mohamed, a 32-year-old construction worker. "We are the sons of the pharaohs." Ambulances had to intervene overnight to extract riot police whose truck took a wrong turn into a street full of protesters. Twenty-eight youth activist groups and political parties called for mass protests on what was called the "Friday of Mourning". A few hundred people, some of them protesters who had camped out overnight, held mid-day prayers in Cairo's central Tahrir Square. Close to 400 people have been hurt in the confrontations since Thursday, the Health Ministry said, many of them by inhaling tear gas fired by riot police protecting the Interior Ministry. Additional reporting by news agencies
