Egypt's interim president on Tuesday (July 9) named liberal economist and former finance minister Hazem el-Beblawi as prime minister in a transitional government.

Egypt State TV announced the appointment of Beblawi and showed footage of him meeting with the acting head of state Adli Mansour, as the authorities sought to steer the country to new parliamentary and presidential elections.

Egypt also said on Tuesday that the Muslim Brotherhood intentionally provoked the incident on Monday (July 8) in which 55 people were killed when troops fired on a crowd supporting ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

The Muslim Brotherhood said the attack was unprovoked, but the army claimed they were fired upon by protesters.

A spokesman for Egypt's Foreign Ministry said today the Brotherhood intentionally provoked the incident.

"Again, there was a systematic campaign of incitement and they wanted to provoke the armed forces in order, frankly speaking, to have this tragic event. To have this photo op of dead people on the ground and then to circulate it abroad that 'you see what the armed forces are doing?' That was the main objective," said Badr Abdelatty.

Abdelatty said the army had been forced to step in and remove Morsi in order to avert a civil war.

"There is no political role for the armed forces, and we believe that without the intervention by the armed forces it could have a disastrous scenario including a possible wide range of civilian war, you call it war or conflicts among the two parts of the society," he said.

Egypt's interim president announced a faster than expected political transition on Monday.

"And as soon as we have an elected house of representatives in the first session, you know, and maximum in one week, the president should call for early presidential elections. So this is the most important development -- we have a specific time frame and the main objective is to have an agreed upon and amended constitution, an elected house of representatives and of course a presidential elections," said Abdelatty.

Presented by Adam Justice

Read more: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/egypt-interim-president-brotherhood-government-cairo-protests-488404