CAIRO — Egypt’s justice minister said today that a resolution was “imminent” to the political crisis over President Mohammed Morsi’s decision to grant himself sweeping new powers, a move that has touched off days of violent street protests.

Ahmed Mekki spoke to reporters shortly before Morsi was due to meet members of the Supreme Judiciary Council to discuss the decrees the Islamist president announced last week that put him above any kind of oversight, including that of the courts. The judiciary council is in charge of the courts.

Mekki has been mediating between the judiciary and the presidency to try to defuse the crisis, although he did not say on what he based his prediction for its impending resolution.

Opposition activists have denounced Morsi’s decrees as a blatant power grab, and refused to enter a dialogue with the presidency before the edicts are rescinded. The president has vigorously defended the new powers, saying they are necessary to implement badly needed reforms and protect Egypt’s transition to democracy.

The dispute has taken a toll on the nation’s already ailing economy — Egypt’s benchmark stock index dropped more than 9.5 percentage points Sunday, the first day of trading since Morsi’s decrees. It fell by nearly 2 percentage points today. The crisis also has played out in street protests in cities across the country, including the capital Cairo and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.

The Health Ministry said today that a total of 444 people have been wounded nationwide since the clashes erupted Friday. Of those, 49 remain hospitalized, said the ministry in a statement carried by Egypt’s official MENA news agency.

In the Nile Delta city of Damanhoor, a teenager was killed late Sunday and at least 40 people were wounded when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the president’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful political force in Egypt.

Today thousands gathered in Damanhoor for the teenager’s funeral, while in Cairo thousands more marched through Tahrir square, the birthplace of last year’s uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.