Two dead as Islamists and police clash in Cairo

Two people have been killed as Islamist protesters and police clashed in Cairo just hours after attackers shot dead two soldiers, including a senior officer, in the Egyptian capital.

The army and police had fanned out across Cairo and other cities in anticipation of rallies called by an Islamist group that opposes the military's overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi last year.

Hours before the small marches left from mosques, gunmen in a car killed a brigadier general in a shooting outside a hotel in the east of the city that also left another soldier dead and one wounded, the military and health officials said.

The assailants fled and were not identified, but the jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis later claimed responsibility.

The organisation is spearheading an insurgency in the Sinai peninsula and has killed scores of policemen and soldiers. It recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

Protests by Islamists in Egypt are increasingly giving way to armed attacks amid a deadly security crackdown that has killed hundreds of people and left thousands in jail.

In Cairo's working class district of Matariya, at least two people were killed when protesters clashed with police, health and security officials said.

A health ministry official said one had been shot in the chest.

A friend identified him as Mohammed Hassan, and told AFP the dead man was an Islamist who had regularly attended anti-government demonstrations.

"The police fired randomly at the protesters," he said.

However, the interior ministry said police came under fire from the protesters, and officers arrested one of them carrying a shotgun.

In all 224 people were rounded up by police, the ministry said, for planning or carrying out acts of violence during the protests. Nearly half of them were arrested before the demonstrations got underway.