Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, who joined the transitional government that replaced Morsi’s administration, denounced what he called “excessive use of force”.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of leftist and liberal groups, expressed “grief” over the deaths, but said Morsi’s Brotherhood bore some of the blame for its “provocative approach”.
A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she deplored the killings.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has infuriated Egypt’s interim administration by maintaining his support for Morsi, denounced what he described as massacres.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged the authorities to “cease the use of violence against protesters, including live fire, and to hold to account those responsible”.
But Egypt’s interior ministry said police “did not use more than tear gas” and accused Islamists of firing on the security forces, wounding 14 policemen, two in the head.
By Saturday evening, the mood in Rabaa al-Adawiya was largely calm. Demonstrators had draped new banners with the word “peaceful” written in Arabic and English around the area.
The bloodshed came after army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the coup that ousted Morsi, called for a mass show of support for a crackdown on “terrorism”.
Hundreds of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters obliged, thronging Cairo’s Tahrir Square and around the Ittihadiya presidential palace on Friday.
But Morsi supporters said their turnout showed many “reject the bloody, military fascist coup that wants to set the wheel of history back”.
On Friday, authorities remanded Morsi in custody for 15 days, accusing him of the “premeditated murder of some prisoners, officers and soldiers” when he broke out of prison during the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak, state news agency MENA said.
He also stands accused of conspiring to “storm prisons and destroy them… allowing prisoners to escape, including himself”.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, has been rocked by violence that has now killed more than 300 people in the less than four weeks since the coup.
Political polarisation has raised fears of prolonged violence, and even a militant backlash, including in the Sinai Peninsula, where the army is already facing daily attacks.
A civilian was killed and a police officer died of his injuries there, security sources said.
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