Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
Protesters clash with supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi with Molotov cocktails and stones outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday night.
By NBC News staff and wire reports.
Updated at 9:40 a.m. ET: CAIRO -- Seven people were killed and hundreds wounded in violent clashes between supporters and opponents of Egypt?s President Mohammed Morsi that raged for several hours into early Thursday morning.
Angry mobs battled each other with Molotov cocktails, rocks and sticks outside the presidential palace complex.
On Thursday, witnesses told Reuters that there also appeared to be at least four tanks outside the palace and Egypt State Radio said that two armored personnel carriers had been deployed in a nearby area called Roxy in an attempt to separate the two sides.
The street battles were the worst violence since Egypt's latest crisis erupted on Nov. 22, when Morsi assumed near absolute powers.
The large scale and intensity of the fighting marked a milestone in Egypt's rapidly emerging schism, pitting the Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-conservative Islamists in one camp, against liberals, leftists and Christians in the other.
Analysis: Supporters of Islamist president push Egypt to tipping point
It was the first time supporters of the rival camps have fought each other since last year's uprising that toppled authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Officials said seven people had been killed and 350 wounded in the violence, for which each side blamed the other, Reuters reported.?The Muslim Brotherhood said six of the dead were Morsi supporters.
The commander of the Republican Guard said deployment of tanks and troop carriers around the presidential palace was intended to separate the adversaries, not to repress them.
"The armed forces, and at the forefront of them the Republican Guard, will not be used as a tool to oppress the demonstrators," General Mohamed Zaki told the state news agency.
Hussein Abdel Ghani, spokesman of the opposition National Salvation Front, said more protests were planned, but not necessarily at the palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district.
"Our youth are leading us today and we decided to agree to whatever they want to do," he told Reuters.
The fighting erupted late Wednesday afternoon when thousands of Morsi's Islamist supporters descended on an area near the presidential palace where some 300 of his opponents were staging a sit-in.
On the doorstep of Egypt's presidential palace, angry protesters accuse Mohamed Morsi of stealing power and imposing a constitution they consider illegal. NBC's Richard Engel reports.
The Islamists, members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, chased the protesters away from their base outside the palace's main gate and tore down their tents.
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After a brief lull, hundreds of Morsi opponents arrived and began throwing firebombs at the president's backers, who responded with rocks.
Asmaa Waguih / Reuters
Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood stand near tanks on Thursday that had been deployed outside the Egypt's presidential palace in Cairo.
By dawn, the violence had calmed. But both sides appeared to be digging in for a long struggle, with the opposition vowing more protests later Thursday and rejecting any dialogue unless the charter is rescinded.
Morsi, for his part, seemed to be pressing relentlessly forward with plans for a Dec. 15 constitutional referendum to pass the new charter.
The violence spread to other parts of the country on Wednesday. Anti-Morsi protesters stormed and set ablaze the Muslim Brotherhood offices in Suez and Ismailia, east of Cairo, and there were clashes in the industrial city of Mahallah and the province of Menoufiyah in the Nile Delta north of the capital.
Violence breaks out in Cairo, Egypt, outside Mohammed Morsi's presidential palace. NBC's Jim Maceda has more on the clashes and a possible constitutional compromise by the Egyptian government.
There were rival demonstrations outside the Brotherhood's headquarters in Alexandria. And security officials said senior Brotherhood official Sobhi Saleh was hospitalized after being severely beaten by Morsi opponents.
Analysis: Egyptians warn that Morsi is no friend of US
The opposition is demanding that Morsi rescind the decrees giving him nearly unrestricted powers and shelve the controversial draft constitution, which the president's Islamist allies rushed through last week.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition reform advocate, said Wednesday that Morsi's rule was "no different" than Mubarak's.
More Egypt coverage from NBC News
"In fact, it is perhaps even worse," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate told a news conference after he accused the president's supporters of a "vicious and deliberate" attack on peaceful demonstrators outside the palace.
"Cancel the constitutional declarations, postpone the referendum, stop the bloodshed, and enter a direct dialogue with the national forces," he wrote on his Twitter account, addressing Morsi.
NBC News' Charlene Gubash and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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