Students clash with police at Cairo's Al-Azhar University

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, CAIRO - Egyptian students loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood fought police at the Cairo campus of Al-Azhar University on Saturday and set fire to two buildings, state television reported. A student activist said a supporter of the Brotherhood had been killed, although a security source denied this.

State-run newspaper Al-Ahram said the clashes began when security forces fired teargas to disperse pro-Brotherhood students who were preventing their classmates from entering university buildings to take exams. Protesters threw rocks at police and set tires on fire to counter the teargas.

State TV broadcast footage of black smoke billowing from the faculty of commerce building and said "terrorist students" had set the agriculture faculty building on fire as well.

Al-Azhar, a respected centre of Sunni Islamic learning, has for months been the scene of protests against what the Brotherhood calls a "military coup" that deposed Islamist Mohamed Mursi as president after a year in office.

Supporters of the Brotherhood took to the streets on Friday after the government designated the Islamist group a terrorist organization - a move that increases the penalties for dissent against the government installed after the army ousted Mursi in July following mass protests against his rule.

The widening crackdown against the movement that was elected into power after the toppling of veteran leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011 has increased tension in a country suffering the worst internal strife of its modern history following Mursi's ousting.