Summary Security forces arrest bodyguards of senior Muslim Brotherhood leader after an exchange of fire.
CAIRO (Reuters) - The head of Egypt s armed forces gave politicians 48 hours on Monday to answer demands made by the Egyptian people or the military would offer its own "road map for the future".
In a statement read on state television, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called mass protests on Sunday, which called for Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to resign, an "unprecedented expression of the popular will.
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces have arrested armed bodyguards of senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat El-Shater on Monday after an exchange of fire in which no one was injured, security sources said.
Shater s family telephoned Al Jazeera television station to report that his home was under police attack.
The sources said security forces were involved in an exchange of fire with the guards after going to arrest them for alleged unlawful possession of firearms.
Shater s whereabouts were not immediately known. He is widely regarded as the strongest personality in the Islamist movement, but who was barred from running for president last year because he had been jailed under toppled ex-President Hosni Mubarak s authoritian rule.
The incident occurred on a day when the armed forces issued an ultimatum to Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to agree within 48 hours on a power-sharing consensus with opposition parties or face more direct military intervention.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama prodded the government of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi to work with the opposition and do more to enact democratic reforms, saying US aid to the country was based on such criteria.
Obama, speaking at a news conference in Tanzania, said the United States was concerned about the violence in Egypt and urged all sides to work towards a peaceful solution.
Earlier, on Monday protesters stormed and ransacked the Cairo headquarters of President Mohammed Morsi s Muslim Brotherhood group early Monday, in an attack that could spark more violence as demonstrators gear up for a second day of mass rallies aimed at forcing the Islamist leader from power.
Organizers of the protests, meanwhile, gave Morsi until 5 p.m. on Tuesday to step down and called on the police and the military to clearly state their support for what the protest movement called the popular will.
Sunday saw millions of Egyptians flood the streets nationwide in a massive outpouring of anger and frustration with the president and the Brotherhood, the Islamist group that propelled Morsi to power.
The protests were largely peaceful, although in a sign of the volatility of the country s divisions, clashes erupted in the evening around the Brotherhood s Cairo headquarters between armed Morsi supporters barricaded inside the building and young protesters pelting it with firebombs and rocks.
