CAIRO: A court verdict over football violence sparked fresh unrest in Egypt on Saturday, with deadly clashes and buildings torched in the capital, as Islamist President Mohamed Morsi faces growing civil unrest.
A Port Said court, sitting in Cairo for security reasons, confirmed death sentences for 21 defendants and handed down life sentences to five people, with 19 receiving lesser jail terms and another 28 exonerated.
Fans of Al-Ahly football club, whose members were killed in a February 2012 stadium riot in Port Said in which 74 people died, had warned police they would retaliate if the defendants were exonerated.
In Cairo, two protesters were killed one from birdshot and one from suffocation in fresh clashes with the police, a health ministry official said.
An AFP correspondent saw one protester brought to a mosque in Tahrir Square with gunshot wounds, with medics confirming he was dead.
Earlier, emergency services chief Mohammed Sultan said a protester "suffocated" after inhaling tear gas, and "died in the ambulance on his way to hospital."
Police fired tear gas and bird shot as the clashes intensified on a large avenue on the banks of the Nile, where police vehicles blocked the road.
Angry crowds hurled rocks at the police and threw a petrol bomb at a luxury five star hotel in the area that houses several embassies.
Sporadic clashes have been going on for weeks on the Nile corniche, close to Tahrir Square. The numbers swelled on Saturday when the regular protesters were joined by activists and football fans following the verdict.
Earlier, huge flames rose above the main building of the Egyptian Football Association and a police officers' club in an affluent neighbourhood on an island in the Nile.
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