Looming crackdown

Egyptian police could start taking action early on Monday against supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi gathered in protest camps in Cairo, security and government sources told news agencies on Sunday.

The camps have become the main flashpoints in the confrontation between the army, which toppled the democratically elected Islamist president last month, and Morsi supporters who demand his reinstatement.

International mediators and some members of the government, which the military installed after ousting Morsi, have tried to persuade the army to avoid using force to disperse the protesters, who at times gather in the tens of thousands.

However, security sources told news agencies that the interior minister and senior aides had agreed to go ahead with the use of force during a meeting held on Sunday.

The news agency AFP reported that Morsi supporters got in another round of protests Sunday afternoon, with loyalists driving a large convoy of cars bearing pictures of the deposed president and honking their horns as through a neighborhood in east Cairo. In the center of the capital, hundreds at a women's march chanted against army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the man behind Morsi's overthrow, shouting: "Sisi is a traitor, Sisi is a killer."

mkg/pfd (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)