Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: In Egypt, chaos reigns throughout the country.

After a week of mass demonstrations, thousands of people continue to ignore state-imposed curfews, taking to the streets to protest against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

A key ally of both the West and Israel, the President is still refusing to stand down. 

Shortly we'll be crossing live to Cairo for the latest on the stand-off, but first this report from the ABC's Middle East correspondent Ben Knight, who spent the weekend on the streets of Cairo.

BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER: In the middle of the biggest protest Egypt has ever seen, a hamburger bar has caught fire. And suddenly, everyone's falling over themselves to save it. 

Government buildings and police stations are burning freely all over this city, but this is the first fire truck I've seen in two days. 

Why were people cheering the Fire Department when they arrived to put this fire out?

MOHAMMED, BYSTANDER: Because they just - people don't want the country to be destroyed. We want to be the same.

BEN KNIGHT: This is Mohammed. He's 23 years old with a university degree and no job, and there are plenty more like him here today. 

Just a block away from where we stand, the ruling party's offices are on fire. They have been since the night before. 

That's the headquarters of the NDP. How do you feel when you watch that burn?

MOHAMMED: I'm relieved by seeing that building burn. Somehow, I don't feel that's wrong. But - everyone in this country hate this party because they have all the power. They do what they want.

BEN KNIGHT: But today, it's the protesters who are doing what they want. 

Yesterday, they overwhelmed the hated riot police, so the police packed up and went home. The protesters are happy; they feel they've won the first battle. But nothing here is clear. The army is on the streets, but who will they really back when the time comes? The people or their commander in chief? On the street, there's no doubt.

There's a baby sitting on a tank. Now I don't know what that says, but I suppose one thing it does say is that people genuinely love the Army in Egypt.

MOHAMMED: That's right. Like I told you, it's a matter of hating the police. We always feel that the Army is one of us and they never hit us or they never shot bullets at us. 

BEN KNIGHT: For 28 years, Egyptians have been unable to protest like this. Now they have the freedom of the streets, no-one seems to quite know what to do with it. There is no organisation; just a general feeling that this is where they should be. Every now and then someone will start up a chant and people will run in a random direction. Then it just stops and people go back to standing around or comparing souvenirs of the night before.

MOHAMMED: This is a good one, yeah. 

BEN KNIGHT: So this is what they're shooting?

MOHAMMED: Yeah. 

BEN KNIGHT: This is very heavy. 

MOHAMMED: Yeah. It's full of a small metal bullets. 

BEN KNIGHT: Did you think that you would live in a country where the police would shoot this at you.

MOHAMMED: No, I never - I know that they will use the gas, but I never thought that they would shoot things like this at us.

BEN KNIGHT: And that has polarised this protest since it began. In the beginning, it was a plea for a better life and more democracy, and many people would've been happy for Hosni Mubarak simply to say that he wouldn't stand for presidential elections in September. But the violence has changed that. But no-one seems to be thinking about what happens here the day after Hosni Mubarak flees the country. Almost no-one.

What are you doing?

VOX POP: We don't want to participate in the mobs; we have a different opinion. 

BEN KNIGHT: So instead, they're cleaning up the square.

VOX POP: Letting the regime kick off, it's not in anyone's interests. 

BEN KNIGHT: Why not?

VOX POP: Because we would be like Tunisia: a state with no state. I need the Government to be there to run things, even if it's corrupted. There is a huge silent majority. I am a silent majority. We don't have the option to speak, so we act.

BEN KNIGHT: Others are acting in different ways. The looting of the National Museum was a shock. These people quickly surrounded it and joined arms in a 24-hour vigil.

Around the centre of the city, rumours fly everywhere. One person tells me the Army has deserted the President. Another, that the prisons have been emptied by Hosni Mubarak to cause chaos. No-one knows what's really happening or what to do. 

The smallest snippet of information spreads fast and causes new outrage.

VOX POP II: They said on the TV now - he said everyone should go out of the streets now. On the four o'clock. But we are not going anywhere, because he tried to kill the Egyptian people to stay in his position. We don't want him! He killed a lot of Egyptian yesterday. ... If he want to stay President, he have to kill us all ...

BEN KNIGHT: Suddenly someone decides it would be a good idea to go and protest in front of the Interior Ministry, so a crowd starts heading down towards its building overlooking the Nile River.

Even walking around the city today is an ordeal. There's so much residue from the tear gas that the crowds kick it up with their feet, stinging your eyes. 

This type of thing is happening all over the city where you have people acting as the police because the police aren't here. The only sirens that we can hear are the sirens of ambulances. There is no authority but the Army, and the Army isn't moving, the Army isn't doing anything. All it's doing is protecting the government buildings from the protesters. This is the law in Egypt this afternoon. 

It's a different crowd down by waterfront. These men are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. They're the biggest opposition group in Egypt, but Hosni Mubarak has outlawed them and has used them, among others, as an excuse to keep the country under emergency law for almost all of his rule. 

Eventually this protest too peters out and people start heading back to the square. The aimlessness continues. Without the police on the streets to give them a focus, the demonstrators have no-one and nothing to fight. People are just walking and waiting, but they don't know for what. 

Then suddenly, someone gets a text message. 

WOMAN: Mubarak left Egpyt! Mubarak left Egpyt! 

BEN KNIGHT: But of course they quickly find out that Hosni Mubarak hasn't gone anywhere. 

As the sun goes down, the main square turns into a strange kind of picnic area. The weather's beautiful, kids play on the remains of the police riot shield and the mood is almost happy. People are tired, many have been up all night, but they don't want to leave. But Cairo is about to find out what happens in the city at night when there are no police on the streets.

Well darkness has fallen and the whole atmosphere of the square has changed very quickly. Obviously all of the families have gone, the young women and the children, they're no longer here and what you have left are the young men and they're in a state of high agitation. Now the Army is here and the Army's keeping the peace around here. But down that street and beyond it, into the rest of the city, there is no law and it's becoming a very, very dangerous place.

Just a few hundred metres away, there's been shooting at the police barracks. People see our camera and urge us to go to a nearby mosque that's become a makeshift emergency room and morgue.

In the neighbourhoods that surround us, looters and thugs are taking control, while the residents are forming vigilante groups to protect themselves. 

This man has left his family at home and he's worried, but he's not leaving the square.

MAN: Mubarak is trying to threaten people to let them feel that they are not safe so that we go back to him and beg him to stay. But we are not going to do this. We want him away. It's enough for him to stay for 30 years. 

BEN KNIGHT: But at what point do you say we want the police back?

MAN: No, we don't want the police back because we have suffered from the police. I myself, I was tortured in all the police centres - I myself. So, I don't want them back. To hell with them! We will handle our own things, we will guard our houses, we will keep them safe and we will fight for our lives and we will fight for our country because we love this country and they don't love it.