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Cairo. Police set off salvos of tear gas and fired birdshot at protesters angry over a deadly riot as fresh clashes on Egyptian streets killed three people on Friday, according to health officials.

One man died just feet away from the Interior Ministry, which has become a target for demonstrators furious that the police failed to prevent a riot at a football match that killed 74 people in the city of Port Said on Wednesday.

Protesters angry over the riot turned their rallies in Cairo and the city of Suez into a call for Egypt’s ruling military council, led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, to surrender power over what they say is the military’s mismanagement of the country’s transition to democracy. More rallies were planned for Friday.

A volunteer doctor said the man in Cairo died of wounds from birdshot fired at close range in clashes at dawn on Friday. The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals, said his field hospital near Cairo’s Tahrir Square was overwhelmed with injuries overnight.

Earlier on Friday, two protesters died by police gunfire in clashes with security forces in Suez, health official Mohammed Lasheen said. About 3,000 people had demonstrated in front of the city’s police headquarters and police fired tear gas and live ammunition, witnesses said. A third protester in Suez was in critical condition because of a wound to the neck. The Suez city security chief denied the deaths there were from police gunfire.

In Cairo, protests spiraled into violent clashes between the protesters and police late on Thursday as demonstrators charged toward the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police. Thousands threw rocks, and police responded with tear gas and birdshot.

The clashes intensified overnight as protesters pushed through barricades and brought down a wall of concrete blocks erected outside the ministry two months ago, after similar violence left more than 40 people dead.

The Interior Ministry urged the protesters in a statement “to listen to the sound of wisdom” and prevent the spread of chaos.

Wednesday’s deaths in Port Said fueled anger at Egypt’s ruling military generals and the already widely distrusted police force. The police had become notorious as the key tool of the oppressive regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted last February.

Associated Press