The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, called on Egyptian police on Wednesday not to shoot at protesters demanding democratic change as four more people died in clashes.

As thousands rallied for a fifth straight day in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, epicenter of the Arab Spring uprising which overthrew veteran president Hosni Mubarak in February, an opinion poll found that 43 percent of Egyptians thought the ruling military was trying to slow down or reverse its gains.

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour is expected to travel to Cairo on Thursday to participate in the Arab foreign ministers emergency meeting on Syria in light of the end of the deadline granted to the state to implement reform.

On Lebanon’s stance on the ministers’ decision, Mansour told the National News Agency: “We will wait and see what step they will take and then we will make ours.”

Three more people died in Cairo on Wednesday, a medic said, as violence which has killed dozens raged into a fifth day despite promises by Egypt's military ruler to speed up the transition to democracy.

Clashes broke out in Mohammed Mahmoud street, just off Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, where thousands of protesters rallied again on Wednesday to demand an immediate end to military rule.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal will meet in Cairo this week despite the unrest rocking Egypt, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday.

The meeting between the exiled Hamas leader and Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah movement, will go ahead "as scheduled on Thursday," Hamas official Ismail Radwan told AFP.

Thousands of protesters swarmed Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday to demand an end to military rule, heightening tension after days of deadly clashes that threaten to derail next week's legislative polls.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) began crisis talks with a number of political forces in a bid to defuse the crisis, state media reported.

Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, returned to Cairo on Sunday after he was evacuated in September following an attack on the embassy, an airport official told Agence France Presse.

"Levanon arrived in the early hours of Sunday on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul," the official said.

Two people were killed and hundreds injured in Egypt this weekend as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters in a violent countdown to the first elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

"Down with Tantawi," hundreds of demonstrators cried in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, referring to the post-Mubarak military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, as they lobbed rocks and other objects towards armed police.

Tens were wounded when Egyptian police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in clashes with protesters on Saturday as they broke up a sit-in organized by people injured during the Arab Spring, triggering a heated skirmish.

"Down with Tantawi," protesters cried, referring to the country's military ruler Hussein Tantawi, as they lobbed rocks and whatever they could towards policemen who responded with heavy volleys of rubber bullets.

At least 33 people were killed in violence in Syria on Friday, most of them in the restive city of Homs, as Human Rights Watch accused the regime of crimes against humanity.

The Local Coordination Committees said that 33 people were killed at the hands of security forces during Friday’s demonstrations.

Angry Syrian protesters pelted a group of opposition leaders with eggs outside Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday, preventing them from entering the building for talks with the organization's chief about the violence in Syria.

The scuffle highlights the deep divisions within the Syrian opposition, which is struggling to overcome infighting and inexperience eight months into the uprising against President Bashar Assad's autocratic regime.