Egypt’s Protesters Say They Won’t Stop Until Mubarak Is Gone

Egypt’s Protesters Say They Won’t Stop Until Mubarak Is Gone

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Here’s the latest on what is happening in Egypt, where anti-government protests are now in their sixth day, and highlights of related news from elsewhere. (Note: Cairo is 7 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast; and click your “refresh” button to be sure you’re seeing our latest additions):

Update at 8 a.m. ET: As we noted yesterday, the Egyptian Army and how it responds could determine what ultimately happens.

To that point, the BBC reports that:

“Egyptian state-owned Nile TV shows video of President Mubarak meeting top military commanders. By his side were Vice-President Omar Suleiman and Defense Minister Tantawi. The channel said the meeting took place in the ‘center for military operations’ to ‘follow up the armed forces’ operations to control the security situation’.”

Our original post, from 7:35 a.m. ET:

— From Cairo, NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro just told Weekend Edition host Liane Hansen that in many parts of the city, young men are protecting the neighborhoods “because there’s just no police presence.” The Army, she says, is protecting key buildings, but not all of the city. Looting has been reported across the city.

Meanwhile, the protesters she has spoken with “say they will not stop … until [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak is gone.”

Al Jazeera reports that “thousands of anti-government protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square are standing their ground, despite troops firing into the air in a bid to disperse them. The show of defiance came as Egypt entered another turbulent day following a night of deadly unrest, when looters roamed the streets in the absence of police.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press says that Al Jazeera “was ordered by Egypt’s information ministry on Sunday to shut down its operations in the country, and later in the day its signal to some parts of the Middle East was cut.”

— According to the BBC, “a coalition of opposition groups [has issued] a statement asking Mohamed ElBaradei to form a transitional government. They call on the Nobel Laureate ‘during this transitional stage, to act in the internal and external affairs of the nation, and to form a temporary government … and to dissolve parliament and draft a new constitution which enables the Egyptian people to freely choose its representatives in parliament and elect a legitimate president.’ The statement was signed by the 6 April Movement, the We are all Khalid Said Movement, the National Assembly for Change and the 25 January Movement.”

— Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is making the rounds of all the major Sunday morning talk shows, where she’ll be pressed on whether the U.S. should be urging Mubarak to heed the protesters’ wishes or whether it’s more important that he remain because of Egypt’s key place in the region.

— At the main international airport, “it is chaotic,” says NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. “It’s not just foreigners who are fleeing in great numbers, but Egyptians.” Many people, she says, “are trying to leave Cairo as the city breaks down. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.