Pro-democracy activists vowed yesterday to step up the largest anti-government protests in Egypt in 30 years despite mass arrests and heavy security and as top dissident Mohamed ElBaradei headed to join them.
The protests against the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak, inspired by the groundbreaking “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia, have sent shockwaves across the region and prompted Washington to prod its long-time ally on democratic reforms.
Mr Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party was holding talks yesterday, according to party members, “to evaluate the situation”.
Events on the street sent jitters yesterday through Egypt’s stock exchange, which suspended trading temporarily after a drop of 6.2 per cent in the bench-mark EGX 30 index, a day after it fell six per cent.
Members of the pro-democracy youth group April 6 Movement said they would defy the ban on demonstrations and take to the streets again yesterday, while calling for mass demonstrations throughout Egypt after Friday’s Muslim prayers.
Thursday (yesterday) “will not be a holiday... street action will continue,” the group said on its Facebook page.
“We’ve started and we won’t stop,” one demonstrator said, even as riot police fanned out across central Cairo.
By late yesterday afternoon, however, there was no sign of the crowds of protesters that had flooded central Cairo on the previous two days.
But in the cities of Suez and Ismailiya, hundreds of protesters clashed with police yesterday in a third straight day of anti-government demonstrations, an AFP photographer and witnesses said.
In Suez, east of Cairo at the mouth of the Suez Canal, anti-riot police fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas and water canon at hundreds of people gathered to demand the release of some 75 people arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday.
An AFP photographer said protesters later hurled molotov cocktails at a fire station in the city, setting it ablaze.
In Ismailiya to the north, witnesses reported that police were yesterday firing tear gas at demonstrators, who were responding by throwing rocks.
Around a dozen people were arrested before the demonstration began.
Nobel laureate Mr ElBaradei – the former chief of the UN nuclear watchdog and a vocal critic of Mr Mubarak – was due back in Egypt from Vienna late yeste-rday and would join in today’s protests, his brother Ali said.
As he departed Vienna, Mr ElBaradei said he was ready to “lead the transition” in Egypt if asked.“If people, in particularly young people, if they want me to lead the transition I will not let them down,” Mr ElBaradei told journalists at Vienna airport.
“My priority right now is to see a new Egypt and to see a new Egypt through peaceful transition,” he added.