Popular unrest in Egypt continued into a fourth day following Friday prayers, demanding an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak today despite the security clampdown.
Opposition leader and Nobel laureate and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei said he would lead a transition government if called upon to do so. But with the beginning of the demonstrations he was arrested and taken to an unknown place.
Police responded by firing tear gas in a bid to disperse the angry crowd.
Protests were also reported from Suez and the Nile Delta cities of Mansoura and Sharqiya, the Reuters news agency said quoting witnesses.
Clashes between protesters and police erupted outside a mosque in the capital, Cairo. Protesters reportedly threw stones and dirt at the police after security forces confronted them.
They held up posters saying "No to dictatorship" and stamped on posters of Mubarak.
Earlier, the government blocked internet, mobile phone and SMS services in order to disrupt the planned demonstrations.
For the past four days, cities across Egypt have witnessed unprecedented protests against the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the president.
The violence has so far left seven people dead.
Earlier, anti-government activists put messages on Facebook social networking site, listing more than 30 mosques and churches to organise the protests.
"Egypt's Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom," the page with more than 70,000 signatories said.
The elite special counterterrorism force had been deployed at strategic points around Cairo as Egypt's interior ministry warned of "decisive measures".
About a half-hour past midnight on Friday in Egypt, the internet went dead.
Almost simultaneously, the handful of companies that pipe the internet into and out of Egypt went dark as protesters were gearing up for a fresh round of demonstrations calling for the end of president Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule, experts said.
Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the internet to try and silence dissent.
Experts say it is unlikely that what has happened in Egypt could happen in the United States because the US has numerous internet providers and ways of connecting to the internet. Co-ordinating a simultaneous shutdown would be a massive undertaking.
Required solidarity with the Egyptian people; every one according to his/her networks, orgs...etc.
With Hope!
