Cairo: A young man was killed on Friday in clashes between Egyptian police and supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohammad Mursi in his Nile Delta hometown, security sources said.

The violence started after security forces moved to disperse Mursi’s backers who had gathered near a police station in the province of Sharqia to protest a death sentence issued against him earlier in the week, the sources added.

Unknown people fired shots, inflicting serious head injuries on the 23-year-old student, the sources said. He was taken to a local hospital where he died.

His death was Egypt’s first in months in street protests by Islamists against the army’s 2013 overthrow of Mursi.

In Cairo, security forces dispersed small marches by Mursi’s loyalists, who had taken to the streets following the Friday prayer to protest his death sentence.

The rallies were held in the northern Cairo district of Al Matariya, a stronghold of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The protesters chanted anti-government slogans before police broke them away, witnesses said. No casualties were reported.

On Tuesday, an Egyptian court sentenced Mursi and other Brotherhood leaders to death on charges of conspiring with foreign groups during the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak. A Brotherhood-led alliance called on followers to hold street protests.

In April, another court handed down a 20-year jail term to Mursi on charges of inciting violence against opponents when he was in power in 2012. He is being tried in two separate cases on charges of spying for Qatar, a staunch Brotherhood ally, and insulting the judiciary.

The army deposed Mursi in mid-2013 following enormous street protests against his one-year. Egyptian authorities have since mounted a tough crackdown on Mursi’s backers, significantly diminishing the Brotherhood’s ability to mobilise street protests.

The government has also designated the 87-year-old Islamist group as a terrorist organisation.

Dozens of Brotherhood members have recently been given heavy-handed sentences, including death rulings.