Egyptian police clashed Saturday with protesters, firing rubber bullets and tear gas as they broke up a sit-in among whose organisers were people injured during the Arab Spring revolt. "Down with Tantawi," hundreds of protesters cried, referring to the country's military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, as they lobbed rocks and whatever they could towards policemen who responded with heavy volleys of rubber bullets.
But by nightfall, police seemed to have retreated from the square and several thousand protesters reassembled peacefully in the central garden of Tahrir Square, now a landmark of popular revolt in the Arab world. "We will never be scared again. They can shoot at us all they want," protester Nasma Abdel Azim said.
The day began when police moved into Tahrir Square in the morning to disperse the demonstrators, who included relatives of victims of the revolt that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in February. An AFP correspondent reported clashes later between riot police and roughly 200 protesters whose numbers later swelled.
Clashes continued unabated through the afternoon and demonstrators seized a police truck. The vehicle was set ablaze and thick black smoke billowed over Tahrir Square, the emblematic site of the 18-day revolt that brought down the Mubarak regime, the correspondent said.
Down the road, between the square and the nearby interior ministry, riot police were seen advancing and retreating, and firing tear gas and rubber bullets at stonethrowers. A policeman on an armoured car was shooting rubber bullets into the crowd, striking a journalist in the forehead and a Western photographer in the face, the correspondent said.
A security official said a number of arrests were made. And an official at the health ministry said 213 people were wounded in the clashes. One of the protesters, Ali Abdel Aziz, said security forces beat up protesters to break up the morning sit-in.
"They beat us harshly, they didn't care for either men or women. The interior ministry must take responsibility. We have one demand, the military council must go," said the 32-year-old accountancy professor Organisers of the sit-in, which had gone for several days, had called for speedy trials of policemen and officials accused of involvement in the deadly crackdown that accompanied Mubarak's abortive bid to retain his grasp on power. Mubarak is on trial along with his former interior minister and security chiefs on charges of ordering the killings of some of the roughly 850 people killed during the uprising.