Crackdown on pro-Morsi protests in Cairo appears imminent

Egyptian security forces are preparing to disperse supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi who are gathered in Cairo protest camps.

Security sources told Al Jazeera that police would launch action against the protesters in the pro-Morsi Cairo suburb of Nasr City early on Monday.

Sources also said early Monday that 34 security battalions are moving towards Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, an area filled with pro-Morsi activists. Al Jazeera has not independently verified this claim.

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The police action, however, is not likely to be a full-scale assault, but rather a comprehensive encirclement of the encampment, Al Jazeera's Simon McGregor-Wood reported Sunday.

Police are likely to let people out, but won't necessarily let them or vital supplies back into the encampment, McGregor-Wood reported.

A senior security source told Reuters earlier Sunday that the decision to take action came after a meeting between the interior minister and his aides.

"State security troops will be deployed around the sit-ins by dawn as a start of procedures that will eventually lead to a dispersal," another source told Reuters.

Officials also told The Associated Press that they were preparing for possible clashes.

Morsi's supporters have said they will not leave the sit-ins until the president, ousted in a popularly supported coup July 3, is reinstated. The demonstrators have remained defiant despite several warnings by the interim leaders that the camps would be dismantled after the Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
   
Efforts by the international community to end the standoff and find a peaceful resolution to the crisis failed. Egypt's prime minister warned that the government's decision to clear the sit-ins was "irreversible."

More: EU urges Egypt to end standoff
 
Egypt's new leadership said that the sit-ins and protests have frightened residents of Cairo, sparked deadly violence and disrupted traffic in the capital. Leaders of the sit-in say their protests have been peaceful and blame security forces and "thugs" for violence.
   
The Arab world's most populous country is readying itself for more potential bloodshed. Already more than 250 people have been killed in violence since Morsi's ouster.

Thousands rallied on Sunday to demand Morsi's reinstatement, amid last-ditch efforts for reconciliation ahead of the threatened crackdown.

A large convoy of cars carrying pictures of the deposed president beeped their horns as they drove through a neighborhood in east Cairo.

Hundreds of women marched in central Cairo against army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, shouting: "Sisi is a traitor; Sisi is a killer."

In a sign of the mounting tensions, a brief overnight power cut at the main sit-in outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque struck panic among the pro-Morsi demonstrators, with some taking to social media to announce that an assault had begun.

The main coalition of Morsi supporters, the Anti-Coup Alliance, said 10 marches would be held in various parts of the capital on Sunday "to defend the electoral legitimacy" of Egypt's first freely elected president.

Al Jazeera and wire services