CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak struck back at his opponents on Wednesday, unleashing waves of his supporters armed with clubs, rocks, knives and firebombs in a concerted assault on thousands of antigovernment protesters in Tahrir Square calling for an end to his authoritarian rule.
Early Thursday morning, shots were fired at the anti-Mubarak protesters, a number of witnesses said. It was unclear whether the shots came from the pro-government demonstrators or from the military forces stationed in the square.
Two people were killed by the gunfire and 45 people were wounded, said a doctor at a nearby emergency clinic set up by the antigovernment demonstrators. After the gunshots, soldiers fired their weapons into the air, temporarily scattering most of the people in the square.
On Wednesday, the protesters, after first trying to respond peacefully to the Mubarak supporters, fought back with rocks and firebombs of their own. Scores of the wounded were carried back on cardboard stretchers to a makeshift clinic set up in a nearby mosque, where they were treated by dozens of doctors.
By 9 p.m. on Wednesday, government officials said, about 600 people had been wounded and three killed in the day’s battles; more than 150 people have died in the week of violence, human rights groups say. The crackdown was in defiance of calls by the United States and Europe to avoid violence, and it provoked swift condemnation and a rift with the Egyptian government, a longstanding ally.
In another sign of the shifting landscape in the Middle East, another authoritarian government made a concession to protesters as the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, said neither he nor his son would run for office in the next election.
The Egyptian military, with tanks and soldiers stationed around the square, neither stopped the violence on Wednesday nor attacked the protesters. Soldiers watched from behind the iron fence of the Egyptian Museum, occasionally shooting their water cannons, but only to extinguish flames ignited by the firebombs.
Only two days after the military pledged not to fire on protesters, it was unclear where the army stood. Many protesters argued that Mr. Mubarak was provoking a confrontation in order to prompt a military crackdown.
It is also possible that the military was satisfied with his decision to step down, perhaps fearful of the more radical shift to democratic elections that protesters are calling for.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who was designated to negotiate with the government on behalf of the opposition, demanded that the army move in and protect the protesters. “The army has to take a stand,” he said in a television interview. “I expect the Egyptian Army to interfere today.”
The deployment of plainclothes forces paid by Mr. Mubarak’s ruling party — men known here as baltageya — has been a hallmark of the Mubarak government, and there were many signs that the violence was carefully choreographed.
The Mubarak supporters emerged from buses. They carried the same flags and the same printed signs, and they all escalated their actions, from shouting to violence, at exactly the same moment: 2:15 p.m. The protesters showed journalists police and ruling party identification cards that they said had been taken from Mubarak supporters who had been caught infiltrating Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square, and detained in a holding pen.
The preparations for a confrontation began Wednesday morning, a day after Mr. Mubarak pledged to step down in September while insisting that he would die on Egyptian soil. The president’s supporters waved flags as though they were headed to a protest, but armed themselves as though they were itching for a fight. Several wore hard hats; one had a meat cleaver and two others grabbed the raw materials to make firebombs from their car.
One man washed his pliers in a pool of dirty sewage, before charging into a battle. Another man held a club wrapped in electrical tape and studded with tacks. Others carried knives, rubber tubes and chains. Before they laid siege to Tahrir Square in what seemed to be coordinated waves, they hid those weapons in their waistbands.
“He won’t go!” the Mubarak supporters chanted.
“We won’t go!” the protesters replied.
Some of the Mubarak supporters arrived in buses. When they spoke with one another, they referred to the antigovernment protesters as foreigners or traitors, and to Mr. Mubarak as Egypt’s “father.”
But some were also men like Mohamed Hassan, an accountant, who had attended Tuesday’s antigovernment demonstration. “Of course we needed a change,” Mr. Hassan said on Wednesday, standing on the Corniche, a boulevard in sight of the Egyptian Museum. Mr. Mubarak’s speech had changed his mind. “I think all of our demands were filled,” he said. “We need change, but step by step.”
The anti-Mubarak demonstrators had organized themselves to try to avoid violence. Men held hands in long chains to keep the two groups apart. Others, with effusive apologies, searched those entering the square for weapons. Some stepped in with whistles to break up arguments that had started to grow heated.
Several people interviewed independently said that ruling party operatives had offered them 50 Egyptian pounds, less than $10, if they agreed to demonstrate in the square on Mr. Mubarak’s behalf. “Fifty pounds for my country!” said Yasmina Salah, 29.
Then, suddenly, at exactly 2:15 p.m. arguments between pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators around the square turned into shoving matches.
“We don’t know who is with us and who is against us now — we are lost,” said Abdel Raouf Mohamed, 37, before he was interrupted by a burly young man who shouted: “I love Mubarak! I need Mubarak!”
Seven minutes later, Reda Sadak, 45, said, “In 10 minutes, there will be a big fight here — it is an old game, the oldest game in the regime.”
In fact, before he finished speaking, rocks and sticks began to fly from the pro-Mubarak forces into the crowd of anti-Mubarak demonstrators.
Even then, many tried to avoid retaliation. A line of a half-dozen unarmed men stood quietly, waving their hands in the air while the pro-Mubarak forces rained rocks down on them.
Sameh Saber, another antigovernment protester, started running toward the battle line with a tree branch.
“Put it down,” an older man implored.
“Three of my friends are bleeding inside,” Mr. Saber yelled back, “and my friend lost an eye!” But he put down the branch.
At 2:50 p.m., as hundreds of rocks flew past the Egyptian Museum, two tanks started up. Anti-Mubarak protesters who had been standing on them jumped off and the crowd cheered with delight. “The people and the army are one hand!” they chanted.
The tanks rolled to create a barricade between the opposing groups, and for a while the soldiers encouraged both sides to calm down. But then the soldiers seemed to retreat, and soon the anti-Mubarak forces began hauling scraps of metal to build a barricade around the tank.
A soldier on top of another tank fired live ammunition into the air to push back a surging group of pro-Mubarak protesters. A couple of men jumped up on the tank and started to kiss his feet, and for a moment the soldier, weapon in hand, began to cry.
A higher-ranking officer climbed up, and the anti-Mubarak protesters begged him to protect them. “But aren’t they Egyptian?” the officer replied. “You want me to fire at Egyptians?”
And for the rest of the day the soldiers did nothing, telling anti-Mubarak protesters who begged them to engage that they “had no orders.”
Then, about 3:15 p.m., the battle was joined. Abandoning any attempt to avoid violence, thousands of anti-Mubarak protesters used scraps of steel to rip up the pavement into pieces, carrying them in milk crates and scarves to hurl back at their attackers.
“They want to take the revolution from us,” said Mohamed Gamil, a 30-year-old dentist in the crowd of antigovernment protesters. “We are ready to die for the revolution.”
Pro-government demonstrators chanted, “With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice for you, oh Mubarak.” Eighteen charged their foes on horseback and two on camels.
Soon the air was full of the sound of anti-Mubarak protesters banging rocks and steel to rally one another, and the smell of gas from burning firebombs.
“Mubarak kills his people!” said Islam Hessomen, 25, a protester. “He is letting the people kill each other!”
As the carnage continued, many turned on the watching military behind the museum’s fence. “Are you happy now?” the anti-Mubarak protesters jeered. Many journalists were harassed and detained.
Late Wednesday, a government spokesman ordered the evacuation of the square, but many of the young men declared that they would stay until Mr. Mubarak left Egypt or they died as “martyrs.”
DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM
Mona El-Naggar and Anthony Shadid contributed reporting.
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