US President Barack Obama has strongly condemned the violence in Egypt, and cancelled joint military exercises planned for later this month.

He said force was not the way to resolve political differences.

Mr Obama’s comments come a day after security forces broke up the protest camps of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, leaving at least 500 people dead.

Brotherhood members had been protesting for weeks about the army’s overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in July.

In the latest violence on Thursday, hundreds of Brotherhood members set fire to a government building near Cairo.

Scores of bodies have not been registered, because the official count only includes bodies which have passed through hospitals.

The Muslim Brotherhood insists that more than 2,000 people died. It says 300 bodies were taken to the Eman mosque, and other bodies were taken to sports halls.

Reports speak of disputes between bereaved relatives and officials entrusted with documenting the causes of death.

Armoured bulldozers had moved into the two protest camps in Cairo shortly after dawn on Wednesday morning.

The smaller of the two protest camps, at Nahda Square, was cleared quickly but clashes raged for several hours in and around the main encampment at Rabaa al-Adawiya. The mosque of the same name was damaged by fire.

Mobs later carried out reprisal attacks on government buildings and police stations as well as churches belonging to the country’s Coptic Christian minority.

In a televised address on Wednesday evening, Egyptian interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi defended the operation, saying the authorities had to restore security.

He declared a state of emergency, but said this would be lifted as soon as possible.

Many countries have condemned the Egyptian security forces’ actions.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has demanded an independent, impartial inquiry into what happened on Wednesday.

“The number of people killed or injured, even according to the government’s figures, point to an excessive, even extreme, use of force against demonstrators,” Ms Pillay said in a statement.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the events as a “very serious massacre”.

Mr Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was ousted by the military on 3 July.

He is now in custody, charged with murder over a 2011 jailbreak. His period of detention was extended by 30 days on Thursday, state media said.

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