Egypt Snap Analysis: Into the Week of Revolution

Al Jazeera English summarises Friday in eight words: "No Sign of an End to the Confrontation".

The anti-regime movement appears to have consolidated its immediate position. After Thursday's deadly attacks by pro-Mubarak forces, Friday passed relatively peacefully. The anti-regime demonstrators established a cordon of barriers around Tahrir Square in Cairo, the centre of the resistance to President Mubarak, and these plus the bolstered presence of the Army kept pro-Mubarak groups at bay. There was still fighting in the side streets, but only a couple of dozen injuries were reported by Friday night.

Inside Tahrir Square, more than a million (how many millions?) people --- after lining up for hours to get through security checkpoints set up by the protesters --- were in the Square, offering dramatic images of mass chanting and a Friday Prayer that awed even the most jaded of observers.

Away from the visible high point of Tahrir, there were reports that the massive show of defiance had taken hold across Egypt. Hundreds of thousands were reported on the streets of El Arish, Alexandria, Mansoura, and other cities. Even the town Aswan, which had not featured before in this crisis, was said to have 20,000 marching.

On the other hand, somewhere Hosni Mubarak is still the President of Egypt. He made no statements on Friday, leaving the public postures to Vice President Omar Suleiman and Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. But with protesters refusing to budge from the demand that Mubarak go immediately, and with no substance emerging from rumoured contacts between opposition parties and the Government, there was nowhere to go beyond Suleiman's announcement that he would confer with a group of key figures today.

Meanwhile, the attempt to "black out" coverage of events --- whether through a designed Government plan, a muddle of orders including the military, and/or chaos --- continues. There was a steady stream of reports throughout the day of detentions and beating of journalists, with the offices of Al Jazeera --- by far the defining media outlet for this crisis --- burned and two of its staff taken away.

So the images and mainstream coverage are now restricted. Still, there are more than enough reports coming through to see the picture. And the caption for that was given early in the day by protest organisers. There would be no defeat on this Friday, nor would there be immediate victory.

Instead, they said, on Saturday the Week of Revolution begins.