Reports the AP:
CAIRO Egyptian activists on Wednesday used social networking sites to call for a fresh wave of demonstrations, a day after they staged the biggest protests in years in Egypt to demand the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule.
However, the Interior Ministry warned that police would not tolerate any gatherings, marches or protests, suggesting that security forces would immediately crackdown at the first sign of protesters gathering.
Across the Egyptian capital on Wednesday, thousands of riot police were deployed in anticipation of fresh anti-government, Tunisia-inspired protests. A day earlier, tens of thousands demonstrated in Cairo and several other Egyptian cities to call for Mubarak's ouster and a solution to rampant poverty, rising prices and high unemployment.
Security officials, meanwhile, said up to 200 protesters were detained early Wednesday during clashes between police and protesters in Cairo and elsewhere in this Arab nation of some 80 million people.
More were likely to be detained as authorities review police video tapes of the protests, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Two protesters and a policeman were killed in Tuesday's protests and some 250 were wounded, including 85 policemen, when riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse protesters shortly after midnight. Medical officials said a third protester died Wednesday from injuries sustained a day earlier.
In the southern city of Assiut, eyewitnesses said riot police set upon some 100 activists staging an anti-government protest Wednesday, beating them up with batons and arresting nearly half of them.
Activists had organized Tuesday's protests, dubbed "day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment," on the social networking site Facebook, and demonstrators spread word of where to gather on Twitter.
"All of Egypt must move, at one time," the Facebook group organizing the demonstrations said in a posting Wednesday in which it listed a number of spots in Cairo and around the country where demonstrators should gather.
Thousands of policemen in riot gear and backed by armored vehicles took up posts on bridges across the Nile, at major intersections and squares as well as outside key installations like the state TV building and the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling National democratic Party in central Cairo.
The capital remained quiet in the early afternoon with no sign of fresh protests.
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