Cario : Tens of thousands of people had flooded into the square on Friday in one of the largest demonstrations since former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11. They spent the day calling for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which nows runs the country, to honour their demands, including prosecuting a number of former high-ranking regime officials, including Mubarak himself.
Street battles between protesters and Egyptian security forces swept through central Cairo on Saturday morning hours after hundreds of army soldiers and Central Security troops stormed Tahrir Square early in the morning to break up a demonstration.
Protesters and riot police threw rocks at each other, and security forces fired tear gas near the Egyptian Museum to disperse the crowds, witnesses said.
Groups of protesters rallying around the southeast corner of the square threw bottles and possibly Molotov cocktails at the riot police, Michelle May, a freelance journalist, told Al Jazeera. They also set vehicles on fire in the square after security forces withdrew.
By 7am Saturday morning, normal street traffic still hadn't returned to one of the main roads running east from Tahrir Square toward Talaat Harb Square, though the gunfire seemed to have subsided a witness said.
Army officers joined protest
Hundreds of soldiers and security troops stormed the square at around 3am on Saturday, firing shots into the air, brandishing tasers and batons, and beating people to disperse a crowd of thousands of protesters, witnesses said.
Tens of thousands of people had flooded into the square on Friday in one of the largest demonstrations since former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11. They spent the day calling for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which nows runs the country, to honour their demands, including prosecuting a number of former high-ranking regime officials, including Mubarak himself.
The protesters had been joined by perhaps as many as 20 military officers, who had been under orders not to participate. Demonstrators stayed in the square past curfew, which run from 2am to 5am, saying they wanted to protect the officers who joined.
When security forces stormed the square, some of the protesting army officers managed to escape, while others were arrested, witnesses said.
Loai Nagati, a student, told that military police and central security forces took some protesters and beat them, but that nobody had been shot. Speaking while gunfire echoed in the background, he said that some of the army officers who joined the protests had been arrested by security forces.
Protesters and army soldiers threw rocks at each other, and at least four injured protesters had to be carried away, he said. Soldiers fired their guns into metal shopfronts, sending sparks flying and bullets ricocheting, apparently to scare away the protesters
