By Jeffrey Fleishman and Laura King, Los Angeles Times
January 30, 2011, 9:41 a.m.
Reporting from Cairo — Egyptian authorities scrambled low-flying fighter jets and dispatched helicopters to fly over thousands of protesters gathered Sunday in Cairo's central square for a sixth day of demonstrations against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
As darkness fell, the demonstrators appeared to be settling in for a long night. As a curfew approached, volunteers fanned out with plastic containers of rice and soup. "They want to stay, and we want to help them," said Mostafa Shalabi, hefting a case of mineral water.
On the first day of the Egyptian workweek, witnesses also reported protests in Alexandria. The military nonetheless declared that authorities had full control over major cities, and an ominous sense of impending violence swept across the country.
In the center of Cairo, shops and businesses were shuttered, hulks of burned-out cars went untowed, glass crunched underfoot, and garbage was beginning to pile up. The city's usual roaring traffic died down to a trickle as many people stayed indoors, fearing roaming gangs of looters. Most automatic-teller machines were out of cash.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Sunday urged Americans to consider leaving the country for security reasons, news agencies reported.
Sunday's protests were less boisterous than in previous days but just as fervent. Arab television channels showed large crowds gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square chanting, "The people want the regime to fall."
For nearly a week, Egypt has been rocked by its worst civil unrest in recent history. Inspired by the popular uprising that toppled the 23-year regime of Tunisian strongman Zine el Abidine ben Ali this month, ordinary Egyptians have taken to the streets to oppose Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 30 years. Led by a new generation of youth, they have defied Mubarak's extensive security apparatus, including police, which have largely fled their posts and left the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez to the army.
On Sunday, news services reported that the widely despised police, who had vacated the streets in recent days, had returned in places to patrol neighborhoods.
In recent days, the police had vacated cities, sparking fear among residents, who stood guard in their neighborhoods armed with bats and clubs against potential looting. Adolescents were seen wielding steel bars. Al Arabiya television reported that shops had been targeted in a rash of looting incidents and that the army had arrested an unspecified number of outlaws in the act of stealing.
At one landmark luxury hotel, off-duty staff in plainclothes formed a phalanx in the lobby, clutching metal bars and wooden clubs.
"In case of trouble," said one before he was shushed by another.
Earlier, workers had nailed sheets of hammered metal over a sweeping expanse of plate-glass windows.
Arabiya also reported in urgent screen captions that thousands of Islamists held in prisons had escaped from the Wadi Natroun prison north of Cairo. Earlier, some members of the outlawed Islamist opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood had been freed in an apparent goodwill gesture by Mubarak's regime.
The Associated Press cited unnamed security officials as saying prisoners had escaped from four prisons. But many Egyptians wonder whether the regime was seeking to create public panic over the security situation — even directing plainclothes agents to riot and loot — in order to send protesters scurrying back to their homes and justify a harsh crackdown. The tactic was used by the Iranian government to crush 2009 protests and by Ben Ali in a failed attempt to halt protests this month.
The army appeared to have bolstered its presence. Soldiers stood guard on streets, preventing drivers from accessing key roads. The army has pleaded with Egyptians to abide by a 6 p.m. curfew that has so far been brazenly flouted.
Cellphone and Internet coverage continued to be spotty, the result of the regime's attempt to prevent protesters from organizing by way of text messages and social-networking websites such as Facebook
