(Adds second death, funeral) CAIRO, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Egyptian riot police fought street battles with violent protesters on Sunday in separate incidents in a Cairo suburb and in Aswan town in the far south of the country, police sources and witnesses said. One person in Aswan died after inhaling tear gas and four policemen were injured by stones and bottles. Police in Mataria northeast of central Cairo intervened when large numbers of Muslims and Christians faced off over a building which the Christians want to convert into a church. The police then clashed mainly with the Muslim side, they said. In Aswan, about 725 km (450 miles) to the south, riot police used tear gas against civilians protesting that a policeman shot dead a man in the town on Saturday. Police said the man was a wanted criminal but the man's relatives said a police officer killed him in error and then the police tried to cover up the incident, the sources said. Thousands of people attended the funeral on Sunday, some chanting: "Illegitimate government, unjust government." In both cases people threw stones and bottles at the police. Two of the policemen were injured in Aswan and two in Cairo, and the protesters damaged shop fronts in both places, they said. In the incident in Mataria, the confrontation between Muslims and Christians was the culmination of a long running dispute over the plan to build a church there. Residents said Christians had come from other parts of the city for the Sunday service at the building, which is not licensed as a church, and Muslims opposed to a church gathered against them. Some chanted: "We're going to knock down the church" and shouted slogans of loyalty to Islam, witnesses said. Relations between Egyptian Muslims and the Christian minority, estimated at up to 10 percent of the population, are usually peaceful, but unrest breaks out from time to time over new churches, conversions and interconfessional marriages. (Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah, Writing by Jonathan Wright)
Palestinians gather at the front gate of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, during a protest in the southern Gaza Strip November 19, 2008. Hundreds of Palestinians rallied on Wednesday to ...
