Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Cairo, said that skirmishes have taken place at a sit-in in a neighbourhood near the Ministry of Defence. 

Witnesses on the ground said unknown assailants resumed their assault on protesters in the area, near the Abbasiya subway station. The confrontation renewed after a two-hour pause, Rageh said.

There was no official word on casualties resulting from the skirmishes that began in the early hours of Wednesday morning. But medics volunteering with the protesters said that a few people had died.

A citizen journalist in Cairo is broadcasting live footage of the scene at Abbasiya.  Watch here.