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Claims that plainclothes police hidden in ranks as battles take place in the symbolic epicentre of the revolution The men came with baseball bats and pieces of broken window frame, machetes and even a homemade spear. Forming a line, the small group of plainclothes policemen blocked one of the broad boulevards leading into Tahrir Square, the symbolic epicentre of the Egyptian revolution. The police had been driven from the streets they are so used to controlling last Friday and now they had come to reclaim what they regarded as rightfully theirs. As they gathered on Qasr el-Aini, they prepared themselves for confrontation with the protesters who had humiliated them and their president. Yesterday was not a day of revolution. It was the beginning of a vicious counter-revolution in support of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, one that seemed set fair to confirm all his critics’ fears. The day after hundreds of thousands of anti-Mubarak demonstrators had filled Tahrir Square to demand his ousting, the supporters of Egypt’s president of 30 years had come to reclaim it with violence. The men came by car and on foot, some even on camel and horseback, arriving as Mubarak’s regime – in a dramatic U-turn – defiantly rejected international calls for an orderly transition of power. The moment the square was stormed came a few minutes before 2pm. In the hours beforehand, the crowds of pro-Mubarak demonstrators had poured over the Nile bridges to gather on the Corniche outside the state-run TV station, a symbol of Mubarak’s rule half a mile up the road. Egypt’s army, which had said it would not use force on the demonstrators, did nothing to prevent them. What happened next was inevitable as tens of thousands of the regime’s supporters – some of whom had been bussed in from the countryside or were civil servants given a day’s holiday – forced their way into the square. Within minutes scuffles had broken out between the sides that saw bricks hurled and savage beatings delivered with staves. Suddenly, the centre of Cairo divided into two battling factions pelting each other with stones. An hour later, dozens of wounded demonstrators were being treated at an open-air aid station at the entrance to the square. Many had blood streaming from wounds. According to the first reports, by early evening at least one person had died and 600 were injured. It was the pro-Mubarak demonstrators – many of whom were summoned by a text message calling on “Egypt lovers” to congregate at Tahrir – who threw the first rocks, catching their opponents unawares. Soon the pro-democracy protesters were holding up sheets of corrugated metal ripped from a construction site to use as shields against the hail of missiles. Some of the pro-Mubarak demonstrators who were captured by the opposition, it was claimed last night, were carrying ID cards that identified them as police. At 3pm, in an extraordinary development, men mounted on horseback entered the square on the regime’s side, creating an almost medieval tableau. Within two hours Molotov cocktails were being thrown while bursts of automatic weapons fire could be heard. After the peace and celebration of the previous days, it came as a shock to witness such violence in the square. A war, primitive and brutal, had broken out, and its frontline was the country’s famous Egyptian Museum. “Why don’t you protect us?” some of the opposition protesters shouted at soldiers, who replied they did not have orders to do so and told people to go home. “The army is neglectful. They let them [the pro-regimists] in,” said Emad Nafa, 52, who for days had praised the army for remaining neutral. Mubarak supporters managed to gain control of the roofs of two of the main buildings while young men in crash helmets, volunteers on the opposition side, acted as stretcher-bearers. Some of the gunfire could be observed. Guardian reporter Mustafa Khalili watched as one soldier stood on his tank and fired at a pro-Mubarak demonstrator who had targeted him with a rock. Another Guardian reporter saw grown men crying at the chaos and bloodshed on their streets. “When we were fighting the central security forces last week it was liberating,” said one member of the anti-Mubarak opposition. “Yet now we are fighting each other and that breaks my heart.” Anti-government protesters, streaming with blood, were taken to makeshift clinics in mosques and alleyways, some begging the impassive soldiers for protection. “Hosni has opened the door for these thugs to attack us,” one man with a loudspeaker shouted to the crowds during the fighting. “After the revolution, they want to send people here to ruin it for us,” said Ahmed Abdullah, a 47-year-old lawyer. “Why do they want us to be at each other’s throats, with the whole world watching us?” At first some of those on the pro-regime side tried to protect opponents being beaten. The Guardian saw a man being pulled out from the flying fists. But such camaraderie did not last long. It was not only in Cairo that Mubarak’s regime moved to crush dissent with an orchestrated show of force that included the clear collusion of the military. There were pro-regime protests in Egypt’s second city, Alexandria. Earlier yesterday in Tahrir Square, it seemed initially that the supporters of the regime had orders to avoid conflict. At first their demonstration mirrored scenes from Tahrir Square from the past week, when anti-Mubarak protesters led mostly peaceful rallies. Some prayed. A policeman was carried on the shoulders of the crowd – just as a deserting soldier had been carried by the opposition only days before. They carried their pictures of Mubarak and stuck them on tanks – just as the opposition had done with its own slogans and symbols. And while some admitted that they had been bussed from outside the capital in organised groups, others had come for more complex reasons. As the demonstration began, they chanted: “Yes! Mubarak!” “Mubarak is our hero” and “Baradei must go.” But among those interviewed by the Guardian were men who said they had swapped sides after Mubarak’s televised address to the nation on Tuesday night, offering concessions and promising not to stand in elections later this year. “People should leave Tahrir Square,” said Mohamed Megahid, 30, a quality control manager. “The president has made the concessions he was asked for. So now people can go home. If he tries to undo the changes, we can always go back again,” he said. “There needs to be time for change. We cannot just press a button.” Tarik Abdel Yazid, 40, asked: “Those people in the square – where does the money come from?. All those people are being supported by outside, by Qatar, Iran and Hamas.” Their gathering was shot through with bitterness at the jeers that had been hurled against the 82-year-old Mubarak over the past nine days. “I feel humiliated,” said Mohammed Hussein, a 31-year-old factory worker. “He is the symbol of our country. When he is insulted, I am insulted.” By late last night, contact with those trapped in the square was limited to desperate tweets as most journalists were driven out. They spoke chillingly of the army withdrawing from the sidestreets around the square and gangs of pro-Mubarak thugs advancing towards them armed with knives and swords. “God help us all,” said one. Egypt Hosni Mubarak Middle East Protest Peter Beaumont Jack Shenker Mustafa Khalili guardian.co.uk