Cairo, Feb. 2: Thousands of supporters and opponents of the Egyptian President , Mr Hosni Mubarak, battled in Cairo’s main square Wednesday, raining stones, bottles and firebombs on each other in scenes of uncontrolled violence as soldiers stood by without intervening.
Government backers galloped in on horses and camels, only to be dragged to the ground and beaten bloody.
At the battle’s front line, next to the famed Egyptian Museum at the edge of Tahrir Square, pro-government rioters blanketing the rooftops of nearby buildings dumped bricks and firebombs onto the crowd below — in the process setting a tree ablaze inside the museum grounds.
On the street, the two sides crouched behind abandoned trucks and pummelled each other with hurled chunks of concrete and bottles, and some among the more than 3,000 government supporters waved machetes.
Bloodied anti-government protesters were taken to makeshift clinics in mosques and alleyways, and several hundred were reported injured.
Some wept and prayed in the square where around 10,000 protesters had massed Wednesday morning and where only a day before they had held a joyous, peaceful rally of a quarter-million, the largest yet in more than a week of demonstrations demanding Mubarak leave power.