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Pro and anti-Mubarak protesters battle in Cairo

Published:Thursday | February 3, 2011 | 12:00 AM
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Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak fight with anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo, Egypt, yesterday above, opposite the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Several thousand supporters of Mubarak wielding whips, clashed with anti-government protesters, as Egypt's upheaval took a dangerous new turn. In chaotic scenes, the two sides pelted each other with stones, and protesters dragged attackers off horses. AP
A wounded demonstrator is evacuated from Cairo's main square, Egypt, yesterday.
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Cairo (AP) :

Thousands of supporters and opponents of President Hosni Mubarak battled in Cairo's main square yesterday, raining stones, bottles and firebombs on each other in scenes of uncontrolled violence as soldiers stood by without intervening. Government backers galloped in on horses and camels, only to be dragged to the ground and beaten bloody.

There are reports that over 500 persons were injured and at least one confirmed dead, this was up to yesterday afternoon.

At one of the fighting's front lines, next to the famed Egyptian Museum at the edge of Tahrir Square, pro-government rioters blanketed the rooftops of nearby buildings and dumped bricks and firebombs on to the crowd below, in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds. Plain-clothes police at the building entrances prevented anti-Mubarak protesters from storming up to stop them.

Ringing battlefield din

The two sides pummelled each other with hurled chunks of concrete and bottles at each of the six entrances to the sprawling plaza, where the 10,000 anti-Mubarak protesters tried to fend off the more than 3,000 attackers who besieged the square. Some on the pro-government side waved machetes, while the square's defenders filled the air with a ringing battlefield din by banging metal fences with sticks.

The protesters accused Mubarak's regime of unleashing a force of paid thugs and plainclothes police to crush their unprecedented nine-day-old movement demanding his ouster, a day after the 82-year-old president refused to step down. They showed off police ID badges they said were wrested off their attackers.

A government minister announ-ced one dead, a person in civilian clothes who may have been a policeman who fell off a nearby bridge, and nearly 600 injured. Bloodied young men staggered or were carried into makeshift clinics set up in mosques and alleyways by the anti-government side.