Egyptian army gives Mursi 48-hour ultimatum to solve crisis An Egyptian protester waves a flag in Tahrir square during a demonstration against Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in Cairo, Monday, July 1, 2013. Cairo: Egypt's army gave President Mohamed Mursi 48 hours to restore stability to a country crippled by a wave of violence, raising the spectre of military intervention if the unrest continues. The armed forces warned that the country was in a "dire" situation and that the demands of the people can't be ignored, according to a statement on state-run television. Crowds in central Cairo later cheered as military helicopters dangled Egyptian flags beneath them and buzzed Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. "The military is back in Egyptian politics in a very serious, direct way," Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, said. We're going to have to see whether or not this constitutes a real military coup and what they do in particular about Dr Mursi's presidency. The statement signals a growing impatience with a regime that has polarised an Egyptian society increasingly traumatized by a crumbling economy. While Dr Mursi's supporters say he was democratically elected last year, hundreds of thousands thronged into Tahrir Square on Monday night accusing him of putting the interests of his own Muslim Brotherhood before the rest of society. Egyptian security forces arrested 15 armed bodyguards of the number two in the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat El-Shater, on Monday after an exchange of fire in which no one was injured, security sources said. The Brotherhood's political party, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), denied the report, and quoted Mr Shater as saying his private driver had been kidnapped after shooting in the area. The sources said the shootout occurred when security forces went to arrest the guards for alleged unlawful possession of firearms they are suspected of having used to shoot at protesters attacking the Brotherhood's headquarters on Sunday. Eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured in clashes around the Brotherhood building on a suburban hilltop overlooking Cairo. Earlier, protesters stormed the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, setting its first floor ablaze. The army statement, which claimed that the military doesn't want to take part in politics, comes eight days after Defense Minister Abdelfatah Al-Seesi gave politicians one week to find a solution. "That week has passed without any initiative or action," the armed forces said on Monday. Wasting more time won't achieve anything but more division and conflict. Dr Mursi last year became the first democratically elected civilian president in a country that had been ruled by the military since the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy. Egypt's president has spent his first year mired in power struggles with a justice system his supporters say is biased against Islamists and a broad coalition of opponents who say he usurped the 2011 uprising that pushed Mubarak from power.