Supporters and opponents of Egypt's president have clashed in several cities after he assumed sweeping new powers, a clear show of the deepening polarisation plaguing the country.
Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel, Mohamed Morsi on Thursday issued a declaration giving himself powers that go beyond those held by toppled president Hosni Mubarak, putting himself above the judiciary.
He also rordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges.
Liberal and secular members earlier walked out of the body, charging it would impose strict Islamic practices.
"I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt," Morsi said on a stage outside the presidential palace on Friday, adding that he was working for social and economic stability and the rotation of power.
Thousands of chanting protesters packed Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising, on Friday, demanding Morsi quit and accusing him of launching a "coup".
There were also violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said and Suez.
Fifteen people were injured in clashes between supporters and opponents of the president.
The headquarters of Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party headquarters in Alexandria was set on fire by protesters on Friday afternoon.
The party's offices have been attacked in five cities in total.
Thousands of protesters began gathering in Tahrir Square Egyptian opposition leaders called for a "million man march" to protest against what they say is a coup by Morsi.
Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Cairo, said that police had started using tear gas on the crowds on the crowds in Tahrir Square.
"It's almost the same scenes that we saw during all those protests against President Mubarak, and yet, this is the elected president of Egypt. But the people here say he's not behaving like an elected president of a country that still doesn't have a constitution," he said.
"They say that he's behaving like a dictator, like a king, like even, they say, a pharaoh."
'We are all together'
Hundreds of Morsi's supporters rallied outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday to express support for the him.
In his speech, Morsi said: "I will never be against any Egyptians because we are all together and we need to give momentum to freedom and democracy and the transfer.
"I like to support what you want - to have stability and safety, the safety of the individual and safety of the nation."
He said he aimed to bring social and economic stability to Egypt. Doing so, he said requires "getting rid of the obstacles of the past".
"My decision is to keep and to maintain and to preserve the nation and the people," Morsi said.
"I don't want to have all the powers...but if I see my nation in danger, I will do and I will act. I must.."
Morsi a "temporary' dictator", was the headline in the independent Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Morsi, an Islamist whose roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood, also gave himself sweeping powers that allowed him to sack the unpopular general prosecutor and opened the door for a retrial for Mubarak and his aides.
The president's decree aimed to end the logjam and push Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, more quickly on its democratic path, the presidential spokesman said.
"President Morsi said we must go out of the bottleneck without breaking the bottle," Yasser Ali told Reuters.
'Protecting the revolution'
Morsi's decree raises very serious human rights concerns, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said on Friday.
"We are very concerned about the possible huge ramifications of this declaration on human rights and the rule of law in Egypt," Rupert Colville said at the United Nations in Geneva.
"We also fear this could lead to a very volatile situation over the next few days, starting today in fact."
Morsi framed his decisions as necessary to protect the revolution that ousted Mubarak nearly two years ago and to cement the nation's transition to democratic rule.
The president's decree, which dismissed Abdel Majid Mahmoud, Egypt's prosecutor general, prompted opposition figure Mohamed El Baradei to accuse Morsi of usurping authority and becoming a "new pharaoh", while other opposition figures on Friday called for nationwide protests
"This is a coup against legitimacy... We are calling on all Egyptians to protest in all of Egypt's squares on Friday," said Sameh Ashour, head of the lawyers' syndicate, in a joint news conference with leading dissidents Amr Moussa and ElBaradei.
"The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," according to a decree read out on television by Yasser Ali, a presidential spokesperson.
'Absolute monarch'
Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, reporting from Cairo on Thursday, said the new declaration meant that Mahmoud was now retroactively dismissed as he had already been in office for six years.
Morsi's statement also indicated that there would be a retrial of all who were acquitted of the murder and attempted murder of protesters, because, according to Morsi's spokesman, they were acquitted based on flawed evidence.
Mahmoud has been replaced by Talaat Ibrahim, who said in a brief statement after being sworn in on Thursday night that he would "work day and night to achieve the goals of the revolution".
"At the same time, there are those who are very concerned that this means that the president is overreaching his authority," Al Jazeera's Greste said.
Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, told Al Jazeera that Morsi "is erecting himself as an absolute monarch" because he did not consult the opposition on the decision.
"The problem is not about the content of the decisions itself, but about the way it was taken," he said.
"This is a dangerous situation for the whole country. It is very confusing, because we don't know if we are in the presence of a constitutional declaration, or of a law, or of just administrative degrees," said Nafaa.
"We have all of this together in the same statement."
Al Jazeera
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