[Jerusalem Post Front Page] Anti-government protesters took over the "Sixth of October" Bridge overlooking Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo on Thursday. Soldiers that were guarding the over-pass retreated, and demonstrators supporting Egyptian geriatric President Hosni Mubarak were driven off of the overpass, Al-Jazeera reported.
The Sixth of October is the day that Egypt attacked Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Both the centrally-located bridge and a Cairo neighborhood are named after the day.
Egyptian army tanks and soldiers moved to end violence between anti-government protesters and supporters of Mubarak in Cairo's central square on Thursday after standing by for nearly a day as the two sides battled with rocks, sticks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.
Hours after automatic gunfire hit the anti-government protest camp at Tahrir Square, killing at least three protesters, soldiers carrying rifles could be seen lining up between the two sides around 11 a.m. Several hundred other soldiers were moving toward the front line.
Four tanks cleared a highway overpass from where Mubarak supporters had hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails onto the protesters.
The pre-dawn firing escalated what appeared to be a well-orchestrated series of assaults on the demonstrators that began when Mubarak supporters charged into the square on horses and camels on Wednesday afternoon, lashing people with whips, while others rained Molotov cocktails and rocks from rooftops.
Anti-Mubarak demonstrators traded showers of rocks and other projectiles in a counter-assault that drove their assailants out of the square within hours. Anti-government protesters took army trucks and set up an ad-hoc front line on the northern edge of the square, near the famed Egyptian Museum. The two sides traded volleys of rocks and Molotov cocktails for much of the night, until sustained bursts of automatic gunfire and powerful single shots rained into the square starting at around 4 a.m. and continuing for more than two hours.