Fighting in the streets around Tahrir Square raged for a third night Monday, as young men aligned with the anti-government protests battled against security forces near the Ministry of the Interior.
Protest organizers are calling for a million-person march to take place around midday, ending in Tahrir, in a show of force against the military regime that has ruled Egypt since the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak, back in February.
Reports have put the death toll from the latest bout of fighting at around 35, although the figures vary, and authorities have been accused of banning reporters from visiting morgues.
Egypt’s cabinet offered its resignation late on Monday but it has not yet been accepted by the military council.
A large fire broke out in the early hours of the night in the upper floors of a building by the square. The fire was said to have been started by one of the many volleys of tear gas fired by riot gear-clad police officers. Black smoke poured across the square and much of the surrounding areas.
A little before midnight, a trip to the front lines of the battle by The Huffington Post revealed a certain rhythm to the combat. Along Mohamed Mahmoud street thousands of young men faced off with the police guarding the Ministry of the Interior, while their comrades launched flanking assaults from various side streets and alleys.
Along one pitch black alleyway leading directly to the police frontline, HuffPost watched the young men creep down the street throwing rocks and yelling.
When it appeared their compatriots on the street had the upper hand — throwing waves of Molotov cocktails and forcing the police into retreat — they would surge forward.
Within minutes, however, the police, taking cover behind armored personnel carriers and other makeshift barricades, would recover and charge back, shooting rubber bullets directly into the crowds, and tear gas canisters both into the crowd and overhead.
As the youths raced backwards, others standing in the intersection — with a clearer view of the action ahead — yelled « Stay there! Stay there! » urging their friends not to give up too much ground.
The battles had continued this way, and along more or less the same ground, for over 60 hours.
One street to the north, organizers had set up an emergency field hospital at the base of the street, where it met Tahrir Square. Every few seconds, injured fighters were rushed from the battle zone onto waiting motorcycles, where they would be sandwiched between two rescuers and delivered to the clinics.
Many had rubber bullet wounds in the head and legs, while others were simply overcome by asphyxiation from the repeated rounds of tear gas fired into the confined space of the alleyways. The more seriously injured found their way directly onto a waiting ambulance, to be taken to a makeshift hospital that protesters had set up in a church nearby.
Every few feet, protesters offered bottles of milk or vinegar or other concoctions, which when sprayed in the eyes offered effective protection from the thick tear gas that constantly lingered in the air, although was little use to direct hits from the gas.
Groups of young Egyptian women were known to show up at the front to cheer on the fighters.
« We’re here to support you, » one fighter said he was told by a gang of girls who surprised him close to police lines earlier in the day.
The fighter explained that many of his compatriots had come to fight because they were poor, and detested the way state police forces had treated them for all their lives.
« These are the people who have nothing in Egypt, » he said. « They were the ones who were the most abused by Mubarak. They hate the state. »
Protesters back in Tahrir Square, where the scene was calm but tense, have called for the military regime now running the country to fully remove themselves from power, but they have not united behind any candidates for replacement.
Even after midnight, Tahrir was as full as it had been in days, with tens of thousands of people — mainly male — watching the fighting develop, or milling around chanting anti-military rhetoric.
Religious figures and politicians who have tried to enter Tahrir, whether to rally the protesters around or attempt to moderate their behaviors, have generally been chased from the square, as the protesters insist they are defending the revolution from corruption from religious ideology or personality politics.
One top figure from the Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative religious group that has one of the largest followings in Egypt, has been chased from the square by angry crowds twice in the past two days.
Late on Monday, the group, which is expected to fare well in next week’s parliamentary elections, formally announced that they would not be joining the Tahrir protests.
huffingtonpost
