Egyptian police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse demonstrators camped out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in protest of President Mohamad Mursi’s latest decisions .

Egyptian police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse demonstrators camped out in Cairo's Tahrir Square in protest of President Mohamad Mursi’s latest decisions.

A number of opposition activists had spent the night in the iconic protest hub -- epicenter of the popular uprising that toppled veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak last year -- erecting some 30 tents, an AFP correspondent reported.

But when more demonstrators attempted to join them in the morning, police responded with volleys of tear gas forcing them to retreat into surrounding streets.

Opposition-led protests were held in most of Egypt's major cities on Friday sparking violent clashes in the canal city of Suez and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, where offices of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which backed Mursi for the presidency, were torched.

The mainly secular liberal activists voiced determination to keep up the momentum of their protests against Mursi's decree on Thursday which placed his decisions beyond judicial scrutiny, vastly adding to his power.

"Egypt is at the start of a new revolution because it was never our intention to replace one dictator with another," activist Mohammed al-Gamal told AFP, showing his broken spectacles and hand in a plaster cast than he said were the result of the police action.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups were also out in strength on Friday in a show of support for the president in his move to prevent the courts dissolving the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly and upper house of parliament as they have already the lower house.

Clashes broke out between the rival supporters in several cities, media reported.
In an address to supporters outside the presidential palace, Mursi insisted that Egypt “remained on the path to freedom and democracy,” as he undercut the judicary.

"Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for," he said.