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More than 200,000 people flooded into the heart of Cairo on Tuesday, filling the city’s main square as a call for a million protesters was answered by the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.
Protesters streamed into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces in the Nile Delta. The crowd was jammed in shoulder to shoulder — schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes.
They sang nationalist songs and chanted the anti-Mubarak “Leave! Leave! Leave!” as military helicopters buzzed overhead.
Soldiers at checkpoints set up the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering.
Protesters also gathered in at least five other cities across Egypt.
The military promised on state TV on Monday night that it would not fire on protesters, a sign that the Army support for Mr. Mubarak may be unravelling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States’ most important Arab ally.
Protesters said they wanted Mr. Mubarak out of power by Friday.
“This is the end for him. It’s time,” said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old unemployed university graduate who came by minibus with his friends from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.
Mr. Mubarak, 82, would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East.
The loosely organised and disparate movement to drive him out is fuelled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the overthrow of Tunisia’s President last month took to the streets on January 25 and mounted a relentless and once unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people — the region’s most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.
Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country’s notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
Working-class men in scuffed shoes and worn cloth pants stood alongside women in full-face veils who chanted, “The people want to bring down the regime!”
For days, Army tanks and troops have surrounded the square, keeping the protests confined but doing nothing to stop people from joining. The guns of many of the tanks pointed out from the square.
Military spokesman Ismail Etman said the military “has not and will not use force against the public” and underlined that “the freedom of peaceful expression is guaranteed for everyone.”
He added the caveats that protesters should not commit “any act that destabilizes security of the country” or damage property.
The protests appeared to be better organised on Tuesday. Volunteers wearing tags reading “Security of the People” said they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.
“We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble,” one announced over a loudspeaker.
Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.
All roads in and out of the flashpoint cities of Alexandria, Suez, Masnoura and Fayoum were also closed.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Normally bustling, Cairo’s streets outside Tahrir Square had a fraction of their normal weekday traffic.
Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, for which prices were spiraling.
An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day after the last of the service providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country.
Cairo’s international airport remained a scene of chaos as thousands of foreigners sought to flee.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
The protesters — and the Obama administration — roundly rejected Mr. Mubarak’s announcement of a new government on Monday that dropped his highly unpopular interior minister, who heads police forces and has been widely denounced by the protesters.
Abdel Rahman Fathi, 25, said that his friends from the provinces were taking private cars to the square.
“The goal is to oust the regime,” he said. “Every day we try to increase the number.”
Two stuffed dummies representing Mr. Mubarak were hung from traffic lights at the square. On their chests was written: “We want to put the murderous President on trial.”
The faces of the dummies were covered with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters’ accusation that Mr. Mubarak is a friend of Israel, which continues to be seen by most Egyptians as their country’s archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.