Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, in Suez, says protesters have taken over the central part of city

[Turborama]

4:13 pm - It's incredible to watch the scene being played out in downtown Cairo on television right now. Protesters have gathered in front of the Ramses Hilton hotel, while around a hundred meters away, police continually fire barrages of tear gas at them. The Ramses Hilton is one of the most posh hotels in the entire country, where Egypt's wealthy and foreign tourists sleep, eat, and drink in rooms the average Egyptian citizen could never dream of affording.

4:09 pm - Al Jazeera Arabic reports that around 15,000 people are protesting in Luxor, a major tourist destination in southern Egypt. We're not able to confirm reliable crowd numbers at this point, especially in Cairo, where protesters have been dispersed all over the capital.

4:03 pm - Al Jazeera's Raywa Rageh, in Alexandria, says around 100 protesters are marching along the city's coastal highway chanting "illegitimate!" She has heard of 10 scattered protests around the Mediterranean port.

3:58 pm - Our presenter here in the studio Kamal Santamaria describes the events in Egypt as "absolute chaos." That's not an inaccurate description: Footage from the streets of Cairo shows riot police firing tear gas right next to men in civilian dress throwing rocks at the same group of protesters.

3:50 pm - Our sister station Al Jazeera Arabic has been reporting from throughout Egypt today, they're currently telling us of other large protests in Port Said, which lies at the mouth of the Suez Canal on the Mediterranean Sea, and in Damietta, a town in the Nile Delta. They report tens of thousands of protesters in Port Said and thousands in Damietta, where crowds set fire to the office of the ruling National Democratic Party.

3:27 pm - Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, in Suez, says protesters have taken over the central part of the city, called al-Arbayyin. The momentum seemed to turn in their favor after several fire engines tried to barrel through a crowd, sending people scattering; the crowd subsequently began pelting the trucks with stones.

"It's getting from bad to worse as far as the security services here are concerned," he tells us

Keep checking this regularly updated live blog: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2011/01/28/friday-protests-liveblog


Ongoing live footage of battle between protesters and police/plainclothes thugs outside Al Jazeera English's office: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now /

Tear gas cannisters just got fired into the nearby Hilton hotel's lobby, protesters are hurling them back.