Petrol bombs were hurled during clashes between supporters of President Mohamed Morsi and his opponents outside his presidential palace, a Reuters witness reported on Wednesday.
The clashes erupted after the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that helped Morsi win a presidential election in June, told its supporters to go to the palace where opponents had gathered to protest against the president's expanded powers.
Brotherhood supporters say they had been shot at during the clashes, where rival sides brawled and threw stones at each other. One protester showed off what he said was a gunshot wound to the leg, with blood pouring from the wound.
Earlier, Supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi scuffled outside the presidential palace in Cairo, hurling stones and other objects at each other.
The president's backers tore down tents erected by opponents of Morsi who began a sit-in on Tuesday against the president's expanded powers and his decision to race through a new constitution they said did not represent the whole nation.
In events that precedent, an Egyptian leftist opposition group urged its supporters to head to the presidential palace in response to the Muslim Brotherhood's call for a protest there in support of President Mohamed Morsi, a spokeswoman said.
The Popular Current, led by ex-presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahy, said its members would back other protesters who remained outside the palace overnight to demand that Morsi cancel a decree giving him sweeping powers and halt plans for a constitutional referendum on Dec. 15.
Egypt's Muslim brotherhood had called on via the brotherhood's Facebook page for a protest on Wednesday outside the presidential palace after the "oppressive abuses" by the opposition.
Scores of anti-Morsi protesters remained camped outside one of the palace gates, a Reuters witness said. Traffic was flowing normally around the area that had been filled with several thousand demonstrators the night before.
Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Morsi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on Dec. 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall.
The crowds had gathered nearby in what organizers had dubbed "last warning" protests against Morsi, who infuriated opponents with a Nov. 22 decree that expanded his powers.
"The people want the downfall of the regime," the demonstrators chanted. Morsi ignited a storm of unrest in his bid to prevent a judiciary still packed with appointees of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak from derailing a troubled political transition.
Facing the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, the Islamist president has shown no sign of buckling under pressure.
Positions:
Three members of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's advisory team have resigned over the crisis ignited by a decree that expanded his powers, presidential sources said on Wednesday.
Seif Abdel Fattah, Ayman al-Sayyad and Amr al-Leithy all tendered their resignations, bringing to six the number of presidential staff who have quit in the row over the decree.
For his part, the Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil called for calm in Cairo so that an effort to promote national dialogue could have a chance of success.
In a statement, Kandil urged calm around the presidential palace - the scene of fighting between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Mursi - to "give the opportunity for the efforts being made now to begin a national dialogue".
Earlier, Egyptian opposition leader Amr Moussa said on Wednesday that President Mohamed Morsi should make a formal offer for dialogue to end a crisis over the constitution, after the vice-president set out what he described as personal ideas to resolve the row.
"We are ready when there is something formal, something expressed in definite terms; we will not ignore it, especially if there is something useful," Moussa told Reuters, adding that he was holding talks with other politicians.
The website of Al-Ahram said opposition politicians were discussing the proposals laid out by Vice-President Mahmoud Mekki that he said were his own. A senior Muslim Brotherhood official told Reuters the ideas needed to be "crystallized.
For his part, Egypt's Vice President Mahmoud Mekki said that protesters have demands that should be respected, stressing that protests and counter protests will not solve the problem.
Mekki then assured that a popular referendum will take place on 15 December, emphasizing that disputed articles of the constitution can be amended before referendum to reach a consensus. He also called for launching soon a dialogue to discuss constitutional amendments, stating that he sees "real political will to respond to opposition demands."
Mekki proposed a dialogue on disputed articles of the draft constitution and said a breakthrough in resolving the crisis was imminent.
"I am completely confident that if not in the coming hours, in the next few days we will reach a breakthrough in the crisis and consensus," he added.
Earlier, the opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei said that the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi should protect protesters gathered outside his presidential palace if he wants to keep "what remains of his legitimacy".
In response to scuffles that broke out between Morsi's supporters and rivals outside the palace in Cairo, ElBaradei wrote on Twitter that Morsi should "bear reponsibility to protect peaceful demonstrations wherever they are if he wants to preserve what remains of his legitimacy."
ElBaradei later blamed President Mohamed Morsi for violence that erupted outside his palace on Wednesday and said it was ready for dialogue if the Islamist leader scrapped a decree that gave him extraordinary powers.
"We hold President Morsi and his government completely responsible for the violence that is happening in Egypt today," the coordinator of the coalition, Mohamed ElBaradei, told a news conference.
"Our opinion was, and still is, that we are ready for dialogue if the constitutional decree is cancelled ... and the referendum on this constitution is postponed," he said referring to a plan to hold a Dec. 15 referendum to approve a draft constitution that the opposition says ignores its concerns.
As for the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she urged Egyptians to discuss their differences over a new constitution, saying there was an urgent need for dialogue in the country.
"The upheaval we are seeing now once again in the streets of Cairo and other cities indicates that dialogue is urgently needed," Clinton told a news conference in Brussels.
"It needs to be a two-way dialogue, not one side talking at another side, but actual respectful exchanges of views and concerns among Egyptians themselves about the constitutional process and the substance of the constitution," she said.
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