CAIRO (AP) — Lawyers say authorities have detained over 300 Egyptian protesters including 18 women following clashes outside the country's Defense Ministry, accused of attacking troops and disrupting public order.

 

Lawyer Ragia Omran said Saturday that the roundup is one of the largest mass arrests to follow violent protests during the country's troubled transition. The detainees face military prosecution.

 

The clashes broke out during an attempt by protesters to march on the Defense Ministry. One soldier was reported killed and over 300 people injured by tear gas, rocks, and live fire.

 

The ruling military council declared an overnight curfew in the area. The violence comes three weeks before presidential elections to replace Hosni Mubarak, ousted after an uprising 15 months ago.

 

Egyptian troops blasted protesters with water cannons, tear gas and live ammunition, trying to prevent them from marching on the Defense Ministry Friday in clashes that left one soldier dead and scores of people injured just three weeks ahead of presidential elections.

 

The fierce street battles raised fears of a new cycle of violence surrounding the upcoming vote to replace Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted more than a year ago. For the first time in Egypt's chaotic transition, Islamic groups, rather than secular forces, were at the forefront of the confrontation with the military rulers who have been accused of trying to cling to power.

 

The military council imposed an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew on the area surrounding the Defense Ministry, which has emerged as a flashpoint for the protesters' anger after nine people were killed on Wednesday in clashes between unidentified assailants and protesters who mainly comprised supporters of a disqualified Islamist presidential candidate.

 

The violence has thrown the campaign for the May 23-24 elections into turmoil, with two front-runners and several other candidates temporarily suspending their campaigns to protest the military's handling of the situation.

 

Thousands of demonstrators massed in Cairo's downtown Tahrir Square — the epicenter of last year's popular uprising — earlier Friday for what has become a weekly rally to demand that the generals speed up a transition to civilian rule. Protesters included the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis but also revolutionary youth who spearheaded the mass rallies that ousted Mubarak.

 

Despite official warnings against gathering, groups marched to the district of Abbasiyah to join a sit-in outside the Defense Ministry initially held by supporters of Hazem Abu Ismail. A lawyer-turned-preacher, hard-line Abu Ismail was disqualified from the race because his late mother allegedly held dual Egyptian-American citizenship, making him ineligible under election laws. He has encouraged his followers to take to the streets. “We are in the face of a plot to abort the revolution,” his spokesman Gamal Saber told the Al-Jazeera network on Friday.