Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians massed in Cairo’s now iconic Tahrir Square yesterday to celebrate the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak the previous Friday and to pressure their new military rulers to deliver reform.
Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi addressed the host of people during Friday prayers, calling on Arab leaders to listen to their people, to cheers from a crowd with a large contingent of Islamist activists.
“The world has changed, the world has progressed, and the Arab world has changed within,” said Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric based in Qatar.
“Don’t obstruct the people,” he said. “Don’t try to lead them on with empty talk. Conduct a real dialogue with them.”
Protesters performed their prayers in massed ranks, with tanks surrounding the square and a light security presence.
Elsewhere in Cairo, several hundred demonstrators gathered on a square in the middle class district of Muhandiseen in a show of support for Mubarak, saying the veteran leader had been wronged by the protesters.
Meanwhile, thousands of mourners called for the downfall of Bahrain’s ruling monarchy yesterday as anger shifted toward the nation’s highest authorities after a deadly assault on pro-reform protesters.
The cries against the king and his inner circle — at a main Shiite mosque and at burials for those killed in Thursday’s crushing attack — reflect an important escalation of the political uprising, which began with calls to weaken the Sunni monarchy’s power and address claims of discrimination against the Shiite majority in the nation.
The mood, however, appears to have turned toward defiance of the entire ruling system after the brutal crackdown on a protest encampment in Bahrain’s capital, Manama
“The regime has broken something inside of me ... All of these people gathered today have had something broken in them,’’ said Ahmed Makki Abu Taki at the funeral for his 23-year-old brother, Mahmoud, who was killed in the pre-dawn sweep through the protest camp in Manama’s Pearl Square.
“We used to demand for the prime minister to step down, but now our demand is for the ruling family to get out,” he said.
Elsewhere, anti-government demonstrators clashed with supporters of Yemen’s longtime ruler and riot police, who fired tear gas and shots in the air to disperse the crowd on what organizers called a “Friday of Rage” across the country.
In the city of Taiz, what appeared to be a hand grenade was thrown at a group of protesters, seriously wounding at least eight people in the blast and stampede that followed, witnesses said.
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