This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011 [1].
A picture is worth a thousand tweets, especially when Twitter is blocked in Egypt [2] in order to halt the transfer of information about the ongoing demonstrations in Egypt today [3].
Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia [4], decided to take her camera and go down to the streets and take some photographs and upload them to her Flickr account [5]. Here are some of her photographs:
[6]In Cairo, tens of thousands of the security forces were seen in the streets since the early morning in their famous black uniform.
This photo is taken by Zeinobia, under creative commons license.
Today is a national holiday in Egypt. The streets were empty. Yet the security forces had their own plans to control the flow of protesters, especially when the usual traffic jams in Cairo's streets are not there to do the natural control of the flow for them.
[7]The security forces blocked some of the major squares and intersections in Cairo. Cars were redirected into bridges or tunnels when possible, as it is always harder to demonstrate inside a tunnel, right!? Some users on twitter reported that the underground metro was closed also to control the flow of the protesters.
This photo is taken by Zeinobia, under creative commons license.
Rassd New Network published a stunning photo of the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo down town [8] on their Facebook page [9] (Update: This photo appears to be a copyrighted Getty image, visit Washington Post [10] to see).
In the evening, the number of the protesters in El-Tahrir Square [11] became really huge. Midan El-Tahrir or El-Tahrir Square has been the site for numerous major protests and demonstrations, including in March 2003 when people came out to protest the War in Iraq.
Twitter was reported to be blocked in the afternoon. Before that, some people had the chance to upload photographs to services like twitpic. @M_Na7as uploaded the photograph below on his twitpic account [12] showing how the protesters outnumbered the security forces in the city of El-Mahalla [13].
[12]The protesters surrounding the security forces in El-Mahalla. It worth mentioning that El-Mahalla has experienced waves of workers strikes in the past few years [14].
Photo taken by @M_Na7as
Also outside Egypt, people recorded the demonstrations with their cameras. @MafazAlSuwaidan shared the picture below [15] of a protest taking place in Toronto, Canada.
[15]Egyptian protesters in down town in Toronto chanting: Revolting till victory, revolting in every street of my country.
Photo taken by @MafazAlSuwaidan
Last by not least, @TheOnlyWarman shared a photo showing trucks filled with soldiers in the calm district of Maadi [16]. Some of the trucks seen in the streets of Cairo, were in fact coming from less tense governorates in order to offer hand to the local forces. And @alasmari shared a photo of torn pictures of the Egyptian president [17] in one of the billboards on the streets.
Meanwhile, Lebanese web developers Layal Al Khatib [18] and Mirelle Raad [19] developed a new photo aggregator [20]to collect photographs shared by netizens for the protests under one roof.
After completing the project, Layal tweeted [21]:
It was gr8 to work with @migheille [22] for a great cause #jan25 [23]. Photos posted through twitter are now here> http://abaadblogs.com/imagefeed/ [20]
And Mireille added [24]:
let the world see, so far 423 picture from the #jan25 [23] egypt demonstration on http://goo.gl/diwO8 [25] plz share handles of ppl live tweeting pics