Protesters have returned to the streets of Cairo in a second day of demonstrations against the military leadership, a day after two people were reported killed and hundreds injured in clashes with police.
As many as 50,000 protesters had massed in Cairo's Tahrir square on Saturday, as tensions rise in Egypt over concerns that the military leadership are unwilling to hand over power. Egyptian activists, who often use social media to organise and distribute news, said on Twitter that the scenes were reminiscent of the protests that unseated Hosni Mubarak in February.
Eyewitness accounts talk of sustained assaults with tear gas and baton rounds, and local press suggests that the death toll could rise.
The protesters were a mix of youth activists and Islamists, according to press reports. Many have been camped out in the square, and violence began when police moved in to clear tents and debris. On Sunday morning, people returned to reoccupy the area.
Elections are due to begin on November 28, and some in the country and internationally have attempted to cast the political choice as one between hardline Islamism or secular liberalism. Analysts said that neither extreme is particularly likely, but the Egyptian military has long seen itself as a bulwark against the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, a moderate Islamist group that, although not allowed to operate in mainstream politics, was the de facto opposition during Hosni Mubarak's rule.
The Brotherhood is well-organised and well-supported, and its affiliated political organisation, the Freedom and Justice Party, is seen as a likely victor in any future polls, but the military, who supported Mubarak for years but ultimately unseated him by refusing to step in as the situation in the country spiralled out of the government's control, are still very much a force.
As Marina Ottaway, a regional expert at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, wrote earlier in the week, secular parties, which are more fragmented than the Brotherhood, are increasingly finding themselves aligned with the military architecture that backed Mubarak for his entire career.
"There is no doubt that Egypt is moving back to a Mubarak-type regime: a strong military aided and abetted by secular politicians whose idea of democracy is that they should govern," Ottaway wrote. "The choice in Egypt is not one between a military dictatorship and a Taliban-type government, as some so-called liberals claim. It is between another Mubarak-type regime and the principles that people fought for in the Egyptian streets."