It also said that 303 people had been wounded in the unrest in the capital, whose centre has turned into a smoke-filled battleground in some of the most violent clashes since a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February.
Egypt’s Dar al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its senior officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, state news agency MENA said.
Clashes around government offices and parliament raged on after nightfall on Friday, with protesters throwing petrol bombs and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.
The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.
