• Security forces try to evict protest outside cabinet building
• Outrage in Bahrain as police handcuff and drag woman activist
At least three people are thought to have been shot dead in Cairo amid clashes between protesters and security forces who moved in to clear a sit-in near the Egyptian cabinet building.
In a resurgence of violence a day after millions voted in parliamentary elections, soldiers reportedly beat women with sticks and hurled chunks of concrete and glass on to protesters from the roof of the parliament.
A prominent Muslim cleric, Sheikh Emad Effat, was said to have been among those killed, while the military also arrested and briefly held two sisters of Alaa Abd el Fattah, the prominent Egyptian blogger detained for insulting the military.
Egyptian bloggers reacted with incredulity to the news that Mona and Sanaa Seif, aged 24 and 17, were among those arrested outside the cabinet building.
"Mona and @sana2 – two sisters of @alaa – were both arrested in army charge. Almost whole family detained now. Who's next? Khaled?" asked one Twitter user upon hearing of the detentions. Khaled, Fatah's son, was born while his father was in jail.
The circumstances of the sisters' arrests were unclear but Mona Seif, who has campaigned vociferously against military trials for civilians, was released unharmed, soon followed by Sanaa.
Their aunt, the novelist and commentator Ahdaf Soueif, said Sanaa, one of a group of young people who helped to produce an opposition newspaper during the revolution, had suffered a slight cut to the head and some bruising.
Some of the other young women had been "very badly beaten", said Soueif. Arrested alongside the Seif sisters was Samira Ibrahim, who is pursuing a sexual assault complaint against the military after she was forced to undergo a so-called virginity test earlier this year. She was later freed.
Clashes continued hours after sunset as the crowds of protesters had grown to hundreds with youths hiding behind a makeshift barrier of metal sheets and throwing volleys of stones at military police lined up in front of the parliament and cabinet headquarters. The Egyptian health ministry said at least 222 people sustained injuries, including broken bones and gunshot wounds.
One protester, Islam Mohammed, said a fellow protester pushed him aside and was hit by a bullet in the stomach. "He took a bullet instead of me and fell to the ground. I have his blood on my shirt and hands," Mohammed said. The condition of the wounded man was not known.
Sahar Abdel-Mohsen, a youth activist, said she saw the bodies of two slain protesters brought to a Cairo hospital, both with gunshot wounds. "The blood is still dripping from the head of one of them," a 22-year-old man, she told The Associated Press. The other was shot in the chest, she said. A Health Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of he was not authorized to talk to the press, confirmed the two deaths.
Ibrahim el-Houdaiby, a prominent activist, told the Associated Press that the dead included Effat, a cleric from Al-Azhar, Egypt's most eminent religious institution. Effat has criticised the military and issued a religious decree forbidding voting in elections for former members of the regime.
Meanwhile, in Bahrain, activists were outraged by the arrest of a 28-year-old blogger and campaigner who was staging a peaceful protest on the outskirts of the capital, Manama, on Thursday.
Zainab al-Khawaja, who tweets under the name AngryArabiya, was handcuffed and dragged along the ground to a police van, and a video apparently showed her being hit by a female officer before being detained. The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed. The government said Khawaja had been arrested because of her "role in a larger illegal gathering in a busy roundabout on one of the main roads outside Manama", and had to be dragged because she resisted arrest.
Her sister, Marayam al-Khawaja, of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said Zainab would be held for at least seven days, after which a judge would decide whether to extend the detention.
The Khawaja family is well-known for being a thorn in the side of the Khalifa royal family; Zainab's father, Abdulhadi, is Bahrain's most prominent dissident. He was jailed for life this year for taking part in protests in February and is serving the sentence at the same prison as Zainab's husband, who was jailed for four years.