The Health Ministry said 257 people had also been wounded in the clashes in Cairo on December 16, where anger at the actions of the security forces turned the city centre into a smoke-filled battleground shortly after two days of mostly peaceful voting.

Egypt's Dar al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its top officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, the state news agency MENA said.

The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.

Clashes around the cabinet offices and parliament raged on after nightfall, with protesters throwing petrol bombs and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.

Some of the casualties had gunshot wounds, but the ruling military council, in a statement read on state television, denied that troops had used firearms and rejected accusations by pro-democracy activists that the army had ignited the unrest by trying to disperse a sit-in outside the cabinet office.