CAIRO
A coalition of largely Islamist bodies and figures supporting ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi called for mass protests on Friday to mark one month since a bloody crackdown on two pro-democracy sit-in camps in Cairo and Giza.
A statement by the National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy was cited by a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Facebook page as saying that protests would set out from three mosques in the coastal city of Alexandria.
On August 14, Egyptian security forces violently dispersed the two major pro-democracy camps in Rabaa al-Adawiya, eastern Cairo, and Giza's Nahda Square.
The bloody crackdown left hundreds dead and thousands injured. At least 288 of those killed had been in the larger of the two protest sites in Rabaa, while 90 were killed during the dispersal of a smaller camp at Nahda near Cairo University.
However, the official death toll remains far below that given by the pro-democracy alliance, which has put the number of deaths from the Rabaa sit-in alone at some 2,600.
In a separate statement, the alliance called on Egyptians to join a civil disobedience campaign in protest of the army's July 3 ouster of Morsi – a move which the deposed leader's backers describe as a "military coup".
It also denounced attacks on pro-democracy demonstrators during the Tuesday protests called by the alliance.
