BBC News Middle East
1 February 2011 Last updated at 15:02 GMT
The BBC's John Simpson describes the scene in Cairo's Tahrir Square
Egyptian protesters are holding huge rallies in Cairo and other cities as they
step up their efforts to force President Hosni Mubarak from power.
Organisers have been hoping to bring one million people on to the streets of
the capital. The demonstration is the biggest since the protests began.
The atmosphere has been festive, with protesters singing and chanting.
Protest leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei, have called on Mr Mubarak to step
down by Friday at the latest.
"They hope that this will end today or Friday at the latest, and they called
the coming Friday 'the Friday of departure', but I hope that President Mubarak
will take heed before then and leave the country after 30 years of rule and
give the people a chance, and I don't expect that he wants to see more blood,"
Mr ElBaradei told al-Arabiya TV.
Festive atmosphere
BBC correspondents in Cairo's Tahrir Square say the crowds there are already
much bigger than on the previous seven days of protests.
Journalists at the scene estimated that hundreds of thousands of people - men,
women and children from a cross-section of Egyptian society - have gathered,
although in the absence of official estimates, there is no way of finding out
the exact numbers.
Continue reading the main story
At the scene
image of Wyre Davies Wyre Davies BBC News, Alexandria
The great strength of this popular uprising is that it is happening across
Egypt.
Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, men and women of all faiths are
taking to the streets.
In the northern city of Alexandria the main focus was the famous Ibrahim Mosque
in the centre of this historical coastal city.
Tens of thousands descended on the square. They climbed on roofs and the tops
of cars and in trees to get a vantage point, all calling for the removal of
Hosni Mubarak.
I saw one effigy of the president being hanged and another man threw shoes at
it. Other people carried aloft a coffin representing the end of the Mubarak
regime.
These are scenes that would have been unthinkable only days ago in such an
authoritarian country.
Egypt's powerful army has vowed it will not use force against the protesters.
Many carried placards and banners daubed with anti-Mubarak slogans. Earlier,
crowds cheered as an effigy of the president was hung from a set of traffic
lights in the square.
Meanwhile, new Vice-President Omar Suleiman said he would hold cross-party
talks on constitutional reform.
Mr Mubarak reshuffled his cabinet on Monday to try to head off the protests,
replacing the widely despised Interior Minister Habib al-Adly.
Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq told state TV the new government would ensure bread
supplies, tackle security problems and "review our entire political,
constitutional and legislative situation, into something more satisfactory and
appropriate for us as Egyptian citizens".
"Everything is subject to amendments, without limits," he said.
But analysts say the army's statement has been a major blow for President
Mubarak, and appears to have encouraged protesters, who are flocking to central
Cairo in their thousands.
The feeling that change is coming in Egypt is getting stronger, says the BBC's
Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Cairo. Too much has happened too quickly to
go back to the way things were before, he says.
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, says 300 people may been killed across
the country since the protests began a week ago. They followed an internet
campaign and were partly inspired by the ousting of President Zine al-Abidine
Ben Ali in Tunisia last month.
Egypt has since cut off the internet in the country and text messaging services
have been disrupted.
In other developments:
* The US state department announced it had ordered all non-emergency US
embassy and government personnel to leave Egypt
* AFP news agency reported that US Ambassador Margaret Scobey had spoken by
phone to Mr ElBaradei
* In an opinion piece for the New York Times, US Senate Foreign Affairs
Committee head John Kerry called on Mr Mubarak to step down and engineer a
peaceful transition
* The US has despatched a special envoy to Cairo, former ambassador to
Egypt Frank Wisner
In Egypt's second biggest city, Alexandria, thousands of people have gathered
to call for the president to step down.
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