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"REVOLUTION IN TUNIS, AS WELL IN EGYPT"

Egypt mass protests against the dictatorial Mubarak regime continue into third day despite ban and STATE TERROR!

Today's latest news:

Angry demonstrators in Egypt have torched a police post in the eastern city of Suez as unrest continues to spill over onto the streets of several cities despite a security crackdown. Witnesses told the Reuters news agency that police fled the post before the protesters burned it using petrol bombs on Thursday morning.
   Dozens more gathered in front of a second police post later in the morning demanding the release of their relatives who were detained in unprecedented protests that authorities have failed to quell since Tuesday.
   Meanwhile, activists are clashing with thousands of riot cops in the capital, Cairo, since the early hours of Thursday.
   2:30pm (local time/9:30pm KST): Right now at least 500 protesters clash with riot cops in demonstrations in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia...

Here a summary of yesterday's/last night's "events":

The Interior Ministry warned Wednesday that police would not tolerate any gatherings, and thousands of security forces were out on the streets poised to move quickly against any unrest. Many were plainclothes officers whose leather jackets and casual sweat shirts allowed them to blend in easily with protesters.

Thousands of policemen in riot gear and backed by armored vehicles also took up posts in Cairo, on bridges across the Nile, at major intersections and squares, as well as outside key installations, including the state TV building and the headquarters of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party.

 
Hussein Megawer, head of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), requested heads of syndicates to thwart any labor demonstrations at this stage.

But despite the official ban by the government on protests and gatherings, running battles between police and anti-government protesters continued.

Activists trying to oust the Egyptian regime played cat-and-mouse with cops on the streets into the early hours of Thursday, as unprecedented protests against Mubarak's 30-year rule entered a third day.

 
Prominent reform campaigner Mohamed El-Baradei, who lives in Vienna, was expected to return to Egypt on Thursday, an arrival that could galvanize protests that so far have lacked a leader.

 
At least six protetesters have died in clashes since they erupted on Tuesday. The protests, inspired by a popular revolt in Tunisia and unprecedented during Mubarak's strong-handed rule, have seen police fire rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators throwing rocks and petrol bombs.

 
In central Cairo on Wednesday demonstrators burned tires and hurled stones at police.

 
In Suez, protesters torched a government building. There, short before, a peaceful gathering turned violent at sunset when protesters threw rocks at a morgue where they were waiting for the body of a man killed a day earlier. Police broke up the crowd with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition fired into the air.

 
Demonstrations continued well into the night. By the early hours of Thursday, smaller groups of protesters were still assembling in both cities and being chased off by police.

Protesters are promising to hold the biggest demonstrations yet on Friday after weekly prayers.

"Egypt's Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom," wrote an activist on a Facebook page.

 
Protesters say they have seen demonstrators dragged away, beaten and shoved into police vans. The Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that 500 had been arrested. Since last night the number indreased to at least 850 people, according to the police. An independent coalition of lawyers said at least 1,500 were detained.