The official Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice website reported on Friday night that they have reports of divisions within the Republican Guards, some members of which want the reinstatement of deposed President Mohamed Morsi.
Morsi was deposed on Wednesday when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a statement ousting him and giving the post of president in the interim to the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court Adly Mansour.
The Freedom and Justice portal said that some officers of the Republican Guards "refuse the military coup on the legitimate president of the country." The officers, the website reported, presented their IDs to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network and they include a general, a brigadier-general and a colonel among others.
The Republican Guards represent an armored division of the army tasked with securing government establishments as well as the Presidential Palace. On Friday, its headquarters in Heliopolis was the site of clashes with Morsi supporters who insisted to stay until they reach the deposed president, presuming he is held inside. Three were killed in the clashes and many were injured.
In a statement of his official Facebook page late Friday, the Military Spokesperson Ahmed Ali denied reports of any division within the army and said that claims of members of the Armed Forces calling on their commander Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to go back on the Wednesday statement are only rumors.
In a report describing the last days for Morsi at the Presidential Palace, the Associated Press wrote on Friday that the deposed president pleaded with sympathetic officers at the Second Army, a field army stationed at the Suez Canal area, to pressure Sisi not to oust him. The Armed Forces immediately denied the reports.
Many online social media users deemed the Brotherhood claims of army divisions dangerous.
"This rhetoric crosses so many military red lines," wrote on Twitter Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at the New-York based Century Foundation, a think tank.
[This article was originally published on Mada Masr.]