US suggests Egyptian military averted civil war

KIDNAPPED?

Mursi has not been seen in public since the army moved in and his supporters say he has been "kidnapped" - a charge denied by military spokesman Ahmed Mohamed Ali, who told Al Arabiya that the army had acted "for his protection".

Ali also accused the Brotherhood of "a campaign of incitement that attempts to depict political differences as religious differences". He said: "There is incitement to target military installations and headquarters, and this is something totally unacceptable in Egypt or in any country."

The running street battles in the early hours of Tuesday were the deadliest in a week. Before that, more than 90 people were killed in the first five days after Mursi's removal, more than half of them shot dead by troops outside a Cairo barracks.

In the lawless Sinai peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a policeman was killed when gunmen opened fire on a police station in El-Arish city, security sources said.

Two security checkpoints in El-Arish airport were also attacked but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

At least 14 people, mainly security personnel, have been killed there since Islamist militants called for an uprising against Egypt's military after Mursi's exit.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Ulf Laessing, Maggie Fick, Andrew Torchia, Yasmine Saleh, Edmund Blair, Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Arshad Mohammed in Jordan; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche)