CAIRO
Pro-democracy students on Wednesday staged fresh demonstrations on university campuses across Egypt to decry Morsi's July 3 ouster and the recent arrest of several colleagues.
Police made their presence felt on Al-Azhar University's campus in eastern Cairo, while university president Osama al-Abd said that stringent measures taken by the authorities had succeeded in keeping a lid on pro-democracy student protests.
Despite this, a number of female engineering students managed to stage a protest on campus, while their male counterparts organized a second demonstration.
The two protests, however, were soon dispersed by teargas-firing police, who stepped in to prevent protesters from disrupting mid-term exams, according to eyewitnesses.
The authorities arrested one student from the university's education faculty who had been accused of rioting as soon as he stepped out of the exam room, students said.
Security sources, however, did not confirm these claims.
Meanwhile, mass communication students from the same university staged a protest outside the Journalists' Syndicate in central Cairo to decry what they described as "police brutality" against students.
Al-Azhar University was the scene of violent clashes between police and students on Tuesday, leaving a number of the latter injured. Police also arrested several student demonstrators, according to student sources.
Prosecutors also ordered the jailing of 128 pro-democracy Al-Azhar students for 15 days pending investigation into charges that they had torched a university building, judicial sources said.
Meanwhile, students from Ain Shams and Cairo universities staged a series of protests and marches on Wednesday against "military rule."
The protesters, led by the pro-democracy "Students against the Coup" movement, said they would continue to demonstrate until detained colleagues were released by authorities.
Cairo University students also organized a march toward Giza's Nahda Square and the Giza Security Directorate.
Outside Ain Shams University, "Students against the Coup" members torched a police vehicle used for transporting prisoners that happened to pass outside the university, Anadolu Agency reporters said.
According to student sources, clashes also erupted on the campus of Zagazig University in the Nile Delta after students staged a protest to demand the release of 55 colleagues detained earlier by police.
During the clashes, police arrested 12 student protesters, student sources said.
Since Egypt's academic year began in September, several universities have been rocked by demonstrations decrying the July 3 ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi.
Al-Azhar University – a traditional stronghold of students affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which Morsi hails – has seen the most violent protests, with daily rallies often escalating into violent confrontations between students and police.
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