CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's public prosecutor ordered the arrest on Wednesday of the leaders of ousted President Mohamed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, charging them with inciting violence in a clash that saw troops shoot dozens of his supporters dead.

A week after the army toppled Egypt's first democratically elected leader, bloodshed has opened deep fissures in the Arab world's most populous country, with bitterness at levels unseen in its modern history.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the announcement of charges against leader Mohamed Badie and several other senior Islamists was a bid by authorities to break up a vigil by thousands of Mursi supporters demanding his reinstatement.

This week's unrest has alarmed Western donors and Israel, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Washington, treading a careful line, has neither welcomed Mursi's removal nor denounced it as a "coup". Under U.S. law, a coup would require it to halt aid, including the $1.3 billion it gives the army each year.

The Brotherhood's downfall has, however, been warmly welcomed by three of the rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf, who showered Cairo with aid to prop up the collapsing economy.

Kuwait promised Egypt $4 billion in cash, loans and fuel on Wednesday, a day after Saudi Arabia pledged $5 billion and the United Arab Emirates offered $3 billion.

The Brotherhood leaders were charged with inciting violence in Monday's shootings, which began before dawn, when the Brotherhood says its followers were peacefully praying. The army says terrorists provoked the shooting by attacking its troops.

According to security sources, 57 people died including 53 protesters and four members of the security forces.

Haddad said the Brotherhood leaders had not been arrested and some were still attending the protest vigil at Rabaa Adawiya mosque. The charges against them were "nothing more than an attempt by the police state to dismantle the Rabaa protest".

"What can we do?" he asked. "In a police state, when the police force are criminals, the judiciary are traitors and the investigators are the fabricators, what can one do?"

In addition to Badie, prosecutors ordered the arrest of others including his deputy, Mahmoud Ezzat, and outspoken party leaders Essam El-Erian and Mohamed El-Beltagi. Khairat El-Shater, another senior leader, was held last week.

The prosecutor also ordered 206 Brotherhood activists arrested after Monday's violence to be detained for a further 15 days on accusations of involvement in the killings. It released 464 others who had been detained, on bail of about $300 each.

RAMADAN OVERSHADOWED

Egyptians have hoped the start of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, would cool passions, but it has been overshadowed by rancour.

Thousands of Brotherhood supporters braved brutal summer heat to maintain their outdoor protest vigil despite the fast, clustering in tents to protect themselves from sun during daylight hours when Islam forbids all eating or drinking.

Some milled about, others staged small marches. A list was posted at the camp bearing the names of the more than 650 people arrested following Monday's "massacre". They say they will not budge until Mursi is restored to power.

"He'll come back," said Reda Ibrahim, a 43-year-old Mursi supporter who came from the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. "He'll finish his term."

Despite the violence that followed Mursi's removal, the interim authorities are proceeding with the army's "road map" to restore civilian rule. On Tuesday, they named 76-year-old economist Hazem el-Beblawi as acting prime minister.

Beblawi told Reuters he would start selecting ministers and would begin by meeting liberal politicians Mohamed ElBaradei and Ziad Bahaa el-Din. ElBaradei, a former U.N. agency chief, has been named vice president. Bahaa el-Din, a former head of Egypt's investment authority, has been touted for senior posts.

Both are prominent figures in the National Salvation Front, the main secularist group that led protests against Mursi.

They also support a stalled $4.8 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, which would require Egypt to make politically painful reforms to subsidies for food and fuel that support its 84 million people but drain its public finances.

Beblawi accepted that it would be a challenge to find a cabinet line-up with universal support. "I don't believe that anything can have unanimous approval," he told Reuters.

Beblawi has indicated he would be open to offering cabinet posts to Islamists, including Brotherhood figures. The Brotherhood says it will have nothing whatsoever to do with a government of what it calls a "fascist coup".

COUP OR NO?

Both sides of Egypt's divide have become fiercely anti-American. Mursi's opponents say President Barack Obama's administration supported the Brotherhood in power, while Mursi's supporters believe Washington was behind the plot to unseat him.

Secularist posters depict the U.S. president as a bearded Brotherhood member and call Cairo ambassador Anne Patterson - who spoke against street protests against Mursi - a "witch". To Islamists, Obama's refusal so far to label the military takeover a "coup" shows he is a hypocrite in promoting democracy.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, who voiced confidence in the ambassador, said it was still too soon to conclude whether the takeover was a coup: "We are evaluating how the authorities are responding to and handling the current situation," he said.

But aid has not been suspended. The Pentagon said a planned delivery four F-16 fighters to Egypt would take place soon.

The promised $12 billion in aid from the Gulf states will go a long way to easing a deep economic crisis that has driven Egypt's finances to the brink during two and a half years of instability since autocrat Hosni Mubarak was swept from power.

The funds also reduce the incentive for Egypt to make the reforms the IMF says are needed to stabilize public finances, attract investment and rekindle economic growth.

In other steps on their "road map", the authorities have announced a temporary constitution, plans to amend it, and a timetable for elections beginning in about six months.

Those moves already demonstrated the difficulty achieving political consensus, even among Mursi's opponents. The secularist NSF initially rejected the interim constitution, as did Islamists and others, although on Wednesday the NSF withdrew its rejection and issued a new, milder criticism.

On Wednesday, the authorities also named a chief prosecutor, replacing Mursi's appointee who was pushed out last week by a court that briefly reinstated his Mubarak-era predecessor.

With the Brotherhood sidelined, the authorities are courting the second largest Islamist group, the ultra-orthodox Nour Party, to demonstrate that Islamists will not be suppressed as they were during six decades of military-backed rule.

Nour officially withdrew from politics in response to Monday's violence but has said it does not object to Beblawi's appointment and will assist his government.

Nour spokesman Nader Bakkar said on Wednesday the group would not accept posts in the new cabinet but would offer "consent and advice to help the cabinet pass through the transition period as soon as possible and with minimum damage".

"We are waiting to help. We are ready to advise but for the time being we still take the decision not to participate in the political process until the judiciary committee gives its report about what happened," he said of this week's shooting deaths.

Bloodshed has abated since Monday's incident, the deadliest since Mubarak's fall, apart from a 2012 soccer stadium riot.

However, there are fears that the political violence could lead to a breakdown in security, especially in the lawless Sinai peninsula region bordering Israel. Two people were killed and six wounded overnight when Islamist militants attacked a Sinai checkpoint.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick, Alexander Dziadosz, Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh, Sarah McFarlane, Mike Collett-White, Shadia Nasralla and Peter Graff in Cairo and Laura MacInnis, Roberta Rampton and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership and Alastair Macdonald)

Egypt's army has ousted Mohammed Morsi and named the country's top judge as interim president. A senior member of the president's Muslim Brotherhood group said Morsi was in military custody.

Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad wrote on his Twitter feed that Morsi was placed under house arrest at the headquarters of the Republican Guard along with several other Brotherhood members. He later said Morsi had been separated and taken to the defense ministry.
News agency AFP subsequently quoted a "senior army official" as saying that Morsi "is being held preventively for final preparations."
Cairo's Tahrir Square, the centerpoint of the public protests opposing Morsi, erupted with glee on Wednesday evening when the military announced that it was seizing control after a 48-hour deadline imposed on Morsi to find a compromise expired. People let off fireworks, sang and cheered on hearing the announcement.

Army announces transition
Egyptian Armed Forces Commander in Chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi said on national television that head of the country's Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, would act as interim president.

He pledged the creation of a national unity government to serve in the interim before fresh elections, adding that a "strong and capable" government would be formed that would have "full capacities."
Al-Sissi also announced the formation of a panel that would look into amendments to the constitution and a law would be drafted to regulate parliamentary elections. The current constitution - drafted in a committee dominated by Morsi's Islamist allies - had been suspended, he said.
Several Islamist television stations, including the Brotherhood's Misr25, were taken off the air immediately after al-Sissi's announcement.
A statement on the Egyptian president's office's Twitter account quoted Morsi as saying that the actions of the military amounted to "a full coup."
Ultimatum expires
On Monday, the Egyptian army had given Morsi 48 hours to reach a compromise deal with the opposition - or face an imposed military solution.
In a last minute statement before the Wednesday deadline expired between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. local time (1400 to 1500 GMT), Morsi himself criticized the military for "taking only one side."
He added that respecting his electoral legitimacy was the only way to prevent violence. In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Morsi called for national dialogue to end the political crisis. Morsi narrowly won a presidential runoff election last June, claiming 51.7 percent of the vote and becoming Egypt's first democratically elected president.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, on an official visit to Greece, called for calm in Cairo.
"We appeal to all those involved to continue on the path to democracy, to refrain from violence and to place their trust in dialogue," Westerwelle said.
"These are the first five minutes of an historic hour in Egypt," the German foreign minister said, adding that dialogue, a willingness to compromise and equality between political powers were necessary "so that this young democracy in Egypt does not immediately fail, but rather gets a fair chance."
Sporadic clashes were reported in several cities around Egypt overnight. State-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported eight deaths and 343 injuries. The Brotherhood's El-Haddad also said on Twitter that men in plain clothes had opened fire for around 15 minutes on a group of Morsi supporters protesting against the military intervention.

msh,rc/dr (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

Egypt's army has plans to push Mohamed Mursi aside and suspend the constitution after an all but impossible ultimatum it has given the Islamist president expires in less than 24 hours, military sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

CAIRO - President Mohamed Mursi clings to office after rebuffing an army ultimatum to force a resolution to Egypt's political crisis, and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood seeks to mass its supporters to defend him. 

Thousands of protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi have gathered on Cairo’s Tahrir Square ahead of mass rallies. Many fear the protests could turn deadly.

Waving Egyptian flags as patriotic songs blasted from speakers, protesters chanted "the people want the ouster of the regime" - a catchphrase used during the 2011 revolt that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak and brough Morsi to power.

Some protesters wore black bandanas with "Leave, Morsi" written on them, while others held up red cards.

"This is the second revolution and Tahrir is the symbol of the revolution," the protester Ibrahim Hammouda said.

Sunday marks the first anniversary of Morsi's presidency as Egypt's first democratically elected leader.

The group Tamarod, which has led the protest movement against Morsi, announced Saturday it has collected 22 million signatures demanding that the president step down and new elections be held.

Tamarod, which means "rebellion" in Arabic, says Morsi has mismanaged the country.

In a show of solidarity with the Tamarod activists, at least eight members of Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, have resigned from their positions.

"We resigned in support of 22 million Egyptians who withdrew their confidence from Morsi," Ihab al-Kharatt, an outgoing deputy, told the AFP news agency.

Obama calls for calm

As tensions between Morsi's opponents and supporters rose on Saturday, a day ahead of the planned protests, US President Barack Obama called on both sides to engage in dialogue rather than violence.

"Every party has to denounce violence," said Obama from Pretoria, where he was meeting with South African officials and a group of youths. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Morsi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."

Obama also expressed his concern that violent unrest in Egypt could spill over to other nations in the region.

jlw/mkg (dpa, AP, Reuters, AFP)