TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - At least 51 supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi were shot dead on Monday, July 8. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood claimed that Morsi supporters were shot near the military building where Morsi is being held.

The bloodshed opened a deeper gash in Egypt’s political crisis, escalating the struggle between the army, which overthrew Morsi last Wednesday after mass demonstrations demanding his resignation, and the Brotherhood, which has denounced what it called a coup.

The military said "a terrorist group" tried to storm the Republican Guard compound and one army officer has been killed and 40 wounded. Soldiers returned fire when they were attacked by armed assailants, a military source said.

The Brotherhood's spokesman, Gehad El-Haddad, who was at a pro-Morsi sit-in at a mosque near the scene, said 42 Morsi supporters had been killed. However, an update revealed that at least 51 people were killed in the shootout.

He said the shooting broke out in the early morning while Islamists were praying and staging a peaceful sit-in outside the Republican Guard barracks.

Al Jazeera's Egypt news channel broadcast footage of what appeared to be five men killed in the violence, and medics applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation to an unconscious man at a makeshift clinic at a nearby pro-Morsi sit-in.

A Reuters television producer at the scene saw first aid helpers attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dying man. Wounded people were being ferried to the field hospital on motorbikes, given first aid treatment and taken away in ambulances.

The military overthrew Morsi on Wednesday after mass nationwide demonstrations led by youth activists demanding his resignation. The Brotherhood denounced the intervention as a coup and vowed peaceful resistance.

REUTERS | NATALIA SANTI