CAIRO – Thousands of Egyptians concentrated on digit of Cairo's important advertizement boulevards weekday to cheer on President Hosni solon in the first mass counter-demonstration after more than a week of calls for him to resign.
Many said solon was Egypt's prizewinning quantity for maintaining stability. They praised him for keeping the land at pact after a program of wars with Israel. Others said they modify personally ashamed by anti-Mubarak demonstrators jeering a man they saw as a symbolisation of the nation.
"I see humiliated," said Muhammad Hussein, a 31-year-old factory worker. "He is the symbolisation of our country. When he is insulted, I am insulted."
The mood was provoked and resistive but the protest was mostly peaceful, in contrast to the scene in Cairo's important square, where hundreds of young pro-government supporters attacked thousands rigorous his ouster.
There were distributed accusations by anti-Mubarak protesters — and whatever grounds — of an authorised persona in the gatherings activity the president.
The pro-Mubarak crowds in Tahrir Square were mainly working-class men in their 20s and 30s. Many said they were street vendors and irregular laborers. A smaller sort were professionals and class owners. One assemble carried pieces of unreal proclaiming them to be residents of the lower-income community of Dweika who had become discover in hold of Mubarak.
Deliveryman Emad Fathi, 35, said that he had not gone to work since the demonstrations began more than a week ago.
"I came here to verify these grouping to leave," he said. "The mosques were occupation on grouping to go and hold Mubarak."
Anti-Mubarak protesters at Tahrir Square accused the program of paying their attackers — a tactic that section forces hit utilised in the past. They also contended there were plainclothes police among their attackers, display police ID badges they said were wrested soured them.
A assorted scene presented itself on the central boulevard in the middle-class, heavily advertizement community of Mohandiseen. Men in specializer sunglasses and women with expensive hairdos connected government employees, including a some dozen nurses in albescent dresses and stockings who jumped and chanted, "We love you Mubarak!"
Younger men carried portraits of solon and loud in support. Children had their faces painted in the black, albescent and red colors of the Afrasian flag.
Pro-Mubarak protesters also concentrated in another middle-class port neighborhoods and the Nile Delta town of Luxor.
There was grounds of government status in the methodicalness of the maximal pro-Mubarak rally.
Over the last quaternary days, at small digit of Egypt's threesome important cell-phone service providers — MobiNil and Vodafone — hit ceased transmitting virtually every book messages. The exceptions were at small digit labeled as messages from the armed forces, which urged grouping to calm down and work with the expeditionary to modify the looting on the streets.
On Wednesday, digit woman at the Mohandiseen feat showed an Associated Press reporter a Vodafone-transmitted book communication from a assemble called empire Lovers that had urged her to attend.
In mountain of interviews, pro-Mubarak demonstrators in Mohandiseen expressed fears of chaos and violence engulfing the country. They said they feared for Egypt's plummeting nowness and the shortages of matter and fuel gripping the country's field cities.
"We hit been a steady land since the days of the Pharoahs. These demonstrators poverty to invoke us into Somalia: poor and at war with itself," cried Samir Hamid, a 58-year-old war veteran. He said he recalled struggling to encounter clams in the pre-Mubarak years, and the wailing of women who lost their sons in wars against Israel.
Many in Mohandiseen said they were middle- and working-class grouping victimized by looters who had broken up their shops and stolen their wares. They blamed the protesters for environment soured the political dubiety that led to the violence.
"Those youth in the conservativist staleness go home," said 30-year-old butcher Ahmad Khalil. "Women in our homes are scared. We need peace," he said.
Many said they did not needs hold the Afrasian president, but said the anti-Mubarak demonstrators should hit been mitigated by his weekday period pledge to step down from noesis in seven months, after the land holds elections.
"It's not like solon crapper rub Aladdin's lamp and vantage discover a genie who will mend everything," said Fatima al-Shal, 41, gesture her safekeeping that were bedecked with digit heavily jeweled parcel rings. "We hit to give them instance to peacefully modify power."
Gatherings of solon supporters were mostly more belligerent to journalists and foreigners. Two Associated Press correspondents and several another journalists were roughed up in Mohandiseen and Tahrir Square.
State TV reported weekday period that foreigners were caught distributing anti-Mubarak leaflets, ostensibly disagreeable to exposit the movement as foreign-fueled.
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Associated Press reporters Maggie archangel and archangel Weissenstein contributed to this article.
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