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A demonstrator protects his head during clashes with Mubarak supporters. (Mohammed Abed, AFP/Getty Images / February 3, 2011)
Reporting from Cairo —
Gunfire erupted in downtown Cairo again Thursday afternoon when anti-government protesters broke out of their barricades on the edge of Tahrir Square. It was the second day of violent clashes between opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
A few dozen army soldiers fired over the protestors' heads in an attempt to push them back. But pro- and anti-government protestors are well aware that the army has pledged not to use force, rendering the small number of soldiers on the ground ineffectual, reduced at times to trying to wave protesters away.
The army had attempted to keep the two sides far enough apart so their stone-throwing would be ineffective — planting tanks and soldiers in the no-man's land of what had become enemy lines — but the protesters' shift out of Tahrir Square onto open ground near the Nile River greatly complicated the soldiers' task.
A potentially larger confrontation loomed Friday, the main prayer day of the Muslim week, when protest organizers have called for a redoubling of efforts to force Mubarak to step aside.
As international pressure mounted for a swift political transition, the newly appointed prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, called the storming of the square on Wednesday by pro-Mubarak partisans a "fatal error" and pledged to investigate who had masterminded it.
Wednesday's onslaught, which left at least five people dead and hundreds injured, produced surreal scenes, most notably a horse-and-camel charge by the attackers. The two sides battled for hours with crude weapons — sticks, stones, bottles, cudgels — fighting that escalated after dark into gunfire and firebombs aimed at the square's defenders.
The government has denied fomenting the violence and distanced itself from the storming of the square. But organizers of what had heretofore been peaceful protesters in the square say the assailants — who staged wave after wave of well-coordinated attacks — were acting at the behest of the 82-year-old Egyptian leader and that their ranks included plainclothes police and criminals sprung from jail for that purpose.
On Thursday, unlike the previous day, those supporting President Hosni Mubarak were outnumbered. They were also extremely angry, taking out their ire on Western journalists who they see as misrepresenting them as the cause of the continuing violence.
On Thursday, the principal flashpoint remained a contested stretch near the world-famous Egyptian Museum, which abuts Tahrir (Liberation) Square. Pro-Mubarak forces roamed freely in other downtown areas. One group of men was seen confiscating food and water apparently meant for the square's defenders.
Protest organizers said they had detained dozens of pro-Mubarak attackers, placing them in a makeshift holding area before periodically handing them over to the army. But rough justice was sometimes dispensed on the spot for suspected provocateurs.
"I'm one of you!" a panicked man cried out in protest as he was seized by a crowd of anti-government demonstrators, who set upon him with fists and sticks.
Foreigners, and foreign journalists in particular, were menaced by roving groups of pro-Mubarak forces, with a number of reporters roughed up. At impromptu checkpoints, pedestrians and motorists were ordered to produce identification _ a token of the vigilante system that has taken hold across the city.
In incongruous scenes, some protesters in the square prostrated themselves in prayer while a hail of rocks fell nearby. On the square's fringes, men smashed railings to make metal clubs. Some people wore motorcycle helmets, or swaddled their heads in blankets.
"Yesterday was a slaughter," said Mahmoud Mustafa Mohammad, who helped defend the square. "I will not leave Tahrir. I will be here until Mubarak leaves, or I die."
laura.king@latimes.com
ned.parker@latimes.com
tphelps@tribune.com
Staff writer Edmund Sanders and Timothy Phelps contributed to this report from Cairo.
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