Mohamed ElBaradei, a former UN
nuclear agency chief, was named on Saturday Egypt's interim prime minister later on
Saturday, a presidency source told Reuters.
Interim leader Adli Mansour
summoned ElBaradei to the presidential palace on Saturday, the state news
agency reported, without giving more details.
Directly after this declaration, a senior official in the Freedom
and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing, said he rejected
Mohamed ElBaradei's appointment as Egypt's interim prime minister, expected to
be confirmed later in the day.
"We reject this coup and all that
results from it, including ElBaradei," he told Reuters at an Islamist
gathering in northern Cairo.
This as an Islamist coalition led
by the Muslim Brotherhood called on people to protest across Egypt on Sunday
against the military overthrow of elected President Mohamed Mursi.
The National Coalition in Support of
Legitimacy issued the statement on Saturday, a day after dozens of people were
killed as Islamists opposed to Mursi's overthrow took to the streets to vent
their fury at what they say was a military coup.
Earlier in the day, gunmen shot dead a Coptic
Christian priest in Egypt's lawless Northern Sinai on Saturday in what could be
the first sectarian attack since the military overthrow of Islamist President
Mohamed Mursi, security sources said.
The shooting in the coastal city of El
Arish was one of several attacks believed to be by Islamist insurgents that
included firing at four military checkpoints in the region, the sources said.
Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood has fiercely criticized
Coptic Pope Tawadros, spiritual leader of Egypt's 8 million Christians, for giving
his blessing to the removal of the president and attending the announcement by
armed forces commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi suspending the
constitution.
On another note, Egypt counted its dead on
Saturday after Islamists enraged by the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi
took to the streets in an explosion of violence against what they denounced as
a military coup.
At least 30 people died and more than 1,000
were wounded after Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement called "Friday of
Rejection" protests across the country and tried to march on the military
compound where the ousted president is held.
The most deadly clashes were in the Mediterranean
city of Alexandria, where 14 people died and 200 were wounded. In central Cairo,
pro- and anti-Morsi protesters fought pitched battles late into the night with
stones, knives, petrol bombs and clubs as armored personnel carriers rumbled
among them.
The Health Ministry said 30 people were
killed throughout Egypt on Friday, and 1,138 injured, state media reported.
State-owned newspapers said the army-backed
authorities that took power on Wednesday and suspended the constitution, would
announce the appointment of a prime minister on Saturday to run the country
during a transition period.
Former U.N. nuclear agency chief Mohamed
ElBaradei, 71, a leading liberal politician, was seen as the most likely
candidate to lead an administration focused on reviving a shattered economy and
restoring civil peace and security.
This as a new Islamist group has
announced its formation in Egypt, calling the army's ousting of President
Morsi a declaration of war on its faith and threatening to use violence
to impose Islamic law.
Ansar al-Shariah in Egypt said it
would gather arms and start training its members, in a statement posted on an
online forum for militants in the country's Sinai region on Friday and recorded
by the SITE Monitoring organization.
Egypt's first freely elected president was
toppled after mass demonstrations against Muslim Brotherhood rule, the latest
twist in a tumultuous two years since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in the Arab
Spring uprisings that swept the region in 2011.
POSITIONS:
The U.S. State Department
condemned the violence and called on all Egyptian leaders to denounce the use
of force and prevent further bloodshed among their supporters.
"The voices of all who are
protesting peacefully must be heard
including those who welcomed the events of earlier this week and those
who supported President Morsi," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
said in a statement.
AP/
REUTERS
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