CAIRO: Pro-democracy activists vowed on Thursday to step up the largest anti-government protests in Egypt in three decades, despite mass arrests and mammoth security following two days of street clashes.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.
Events on the streets sent jitters Thursday through Egypt's stock exchange, which suspended trading temporarily after a drop of 6.2 percent in the benchmark EGX 30 index, a day after it fell six percent.Members of the pro-democracy youth group April 6 Movement said they would defy the ban on demonstrations and take to the streets again on Thursday, while calling for mass demonstrations after Friday's Muslim prayers.
Thursday "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 told AFP, even as riot police fanned out across central Cairo."To continue what we started on January 25, we will take to the streets to demand the right to life, liberty, dignity and we call on everyone to take to the streets and to keep going until the demands of the Egyptian people have been met," the group said.Opposition groups circulated SMS messages and posted appeals on social networking site Facebook for fresh demonstrations "to demand the right to live with freedom and dignity".According to a security official, at least 1,000 people have been detained around the country since the demonstrations started on Tuesday.
Medics have reported the deaths of six people four protesters and two policemen in violence linked to the protests, with 55 protesters and 15 police injured.
Egyptian opposition figure and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, meanwhile, was due back in Egypt from Vienna on Thursday, his family told AFP.ElBaradei recently told a German magazine that Egyptians should be able to follow the lead set by the toppling of Tunisia's veteran president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali."If the Tunisians have done it, Egyptians should get there too," ElBaradei told Der Spiegel.Demonstrations in central Cairo continued into the early hours of Thursday, ending when police fired tear gas and made further arrests.
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