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Egypt anti-government protests grow

More than 650 injured and one death (shot in chest) so far.

Link in my last post continues to cover the standoff down one street. Police slowly advancing, lots of teargas, small number of visible protesters with makeshift moveable barricades. As I type this they have just been forced to retreat off camera.
 
No live images from that channel at the moment.

Meanwhile via AlJazeera:

Egypt Cabinet statement: "What is happening in Tahrir is very dangerous and threatens the course of the nation and the revolution".
 
Longer-range teargas is now being fired into the square, the police have pushed everyone back from one of the streets.
 
They were able to push the people out of Tahrir square quite easily in the end. 3 vans, and not a huge number of police were able to do it by using plenty of teargas and waiting till the small hours when numbers of protesters were down. They continued to push people all the way back down one of the major roads, with the tv channel's camera having to repeatedly retreat. That bunch of police then returned to the roundabout, and people started to move forwards again, but the live pictures just ended and there were at least several hundred police on the roundabout.
 
Although please note that I could only see an overview of the square from above, and the retreat down one particular street, and I've heard nothing about it in english yet so I don't know the complete picture.
 
People seem to have poured back into the square, although the police mostly seem to have left before this happened, not really sure whats going on.
 
In Tahrir its as if the police were never there, crowd of hundreds, perhaps a thousand or two at a stretch, chanting the night away.
 
Good account in the guardian - it seems the revolution may be bursting into life again -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/egypt-clashes-continue-second-day

By late evening the number of demonstrators had grown to several thousand with the arrival of the ultras – hardcore fans of Cairo's main football teams, some of whom played a significant role in the anti-regime uprising earlier this year – and some Islamist political groups, forcing police units to fall back from Tahrir where protesters quickly built barricades and fires continued to burn.
The retreat marked a significant blow to the security forces, which over the past few months have generally avoided attacking large protests, preferring to wait instead until numbers dwindle and the remaining activists can be isolated and labelled as hardcore troublemakers. On Saturday that tactic appeared to have backfired, with the police assault provoking a strong public response.
"Considering the small numbers that we had this morning, it's amazing," said Hady Kamar, a 26-year-old artist who was hit twice by rubber bullets, once in the foot and once in the head. "When things looked darkest and the police had pushed us out of Tahrir, we returned in huge numbers. To see this many on the street and feel this much energy, is special. Today it feels like the revolution is back up and running, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. It's always been a day by day struggle."
Reprising many of the slogans used during mass protests against Mubarak, demonstrators vented their anger at Scaf and chanted "Here is the revolution, nothing else".

Defeaning silence from the governments harranging Syria for doing exactly the same thing.
 
It will be interest to see if any of the more major political parties chance stance regarding the impending elections, at the moment its mostly the youth revolutionary groups who have come out in favour of the street action and against the elections. el Blah blah and a few others are calling for a civilian group to takeover the role presently filled by the military council, but so far the muslim brotherhood & others are not properly backing the current unrest. But they were behind the curve last time too, so lets see what happens.

At the moment that Al Jazeera arabic egypt live events channel is the one to watch for live Tahrir footage today.

http://www.livestation.com/channels/131-al-jazeera-mubasher-misr-arabic
 
Security forces in the last hour cleared square,people who were dispersed have taken it back again,large numbers coming to help.
 
The action around Tahrir continues to be far more back and forth than it was when Mubarak was removed. Some minutes ago the scene was similar to the one I saw late last night, with protesters only recently pouring back into the square, and the police pulling back. I don't know if the regime has a deliberate strategy of repeatedly chasing people out of the square and then letting them return, but it sort of looks that way. It doesn't look like they have committed the number of police necessary to completely occupy the entire square and heavily man all entry points, but they don't even seem to attempt to hold the line down the main street that they have successfully pushed people far down on at least several occasions.
 
I'm worried the Muslim brotherhood might - if this develops into challenging the restructured regime - well use this to demonstrate their use to the military and other elites...

Yes thats a concern. There are few enough people involved in the Tahrir action that any number of groups could squish them. I know dylans was quite into the idea that the brotherhood may easily develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the regime, although personally I suspect they are engaging in a finer balancing act than that, and aren't keen to make high-stakes miscalculations. Certainly they should be big winners in the elections, but they don't seem to be overjoyed with the constitutional stuff that the army touted recently.

Before the current stuff Al Jazeera had already got the 'historic elections' banners out on their site, now the narrative becomes more complex once again.
 
At least AlJazeera actually reported the police takeover of the square this time, thought I was seeing things last night as the police takeover action happened too late at night for english-speaking journalists or twitter commentators to provide running commentary, and today it was almost as if it never happened. But as the latest police action happened at a more civilised time today, we got this:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/11/2011112082333907688.html

Thick clouds of tear gas filled the air on Sunday as military police armed with batons and shields charged into the square, firing rubber bullets and forcibly clearing the area of protesters. The assault sparked panic among the estimated 5,000 protesters, many of whom had remained in Tahrir since early on Saturday.
A short time affter the offensive, however, a surge of protesters returned to the square, overwhelming security forces and retaking the area.
“This is what the Egyptian army calls protecting the revolution,” Salma Said, a democracy activist, told Al Jazeera. “We’ve lost so many people in the last nine months. We want Field Marshall Tantawi gone. We’re going to keep fighting, we don’t have any other options.”
Before the protesters regrouped in the plaza, military police torched tents in the middle of the square, and witnesses reported security forces burning protesters’ motorcycles and other belongings.
When security forces arrived, hundreds of people fled into the many alleyways surrounding the square, banging on the doors of nearby hotels and apartments in a bid to seek shelter from the ensuing security forces.
 
I'm worried the Muslim brotherhood might - if this develops into challenging the restructured regime - well use this to demonstrate their use to the military and other elites...

I think if the Muslim Brotherhood went down this route then it would split the organisation. It's clear that their younger members favour the revolution while the traditional older business people would favour a settlement with the military
 
I see thronging masses in the dark and I hear arabic

Yeah thats mostly all you'll see apart from times where the police push forwards right into the square, which may not happen for many hours at a time. The other tv channel had better quality footage last night where it was easier to see little details, and they even had a camera on the ground which could show detail of the battles & standoffs down certain streets. But at the moment they have a cooking programme on.
 
The police & military police taking the square earlier is captured very well in this clip.



I see AlJazeera also got a good view of police & their non-uniformed pals burning a motorcycle and other stuff after they took the square, just been watching a rerun on their live egypt channel.
 
Some horrible injury reports on twitter, and it sounds like there have been quite a number of deaths, some quite possibly caused by crushing.
 
Removing bodies in Tahrir.

451836020.jpg


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