Egyptians push for faster reforms
Thousands fill Cairo’s main square in protest against the Sharif government’s perceived failure to bring about change.
Many Egyptians have lost confidence in the government of Essam Sharaf, the interim prime minister, who they say has failed to deliver on promised reforms, five months after a popular uprising led to the topping of Hosni Mubarak’s government.
A large group of protesters, who have been camping in tents in Cairo’s main Tahrir Square since Friday, blocked thousands of government workers from entering one of the city’s most iconic administrative buildings on Sunday.
Among their various demands, the protesters want country’s military leaders, who have assumed much power, to try and convict properly sacked members of the security forces accused of killing demonstrators during the revolution.
Elsewhere on Sunday, the military forcibly broke up two sit-in protests along two major highways, the Suez-Port Tawfik road and the Suez-Sokhna road, witnesses told Al Jazeera.
They said hundreds of army soldiers beat and arrested the protesters in an attempt to disperse them.
Suez has been the scene of intense demonstrations this past week following a court order to release on bail police officers accused of killing protesters in the port city, in Egypt’s northeast.
Separately, for the past four weeks thousands of Suez Canal authority workers have been on strike.