Indians returning from Egypt, now in the midst of an upheaval, are greeted by relatives after their arrival in Mumbai on Monday.

A sea of protesters flooded downtown Cairo on Monday, brushing aside limited concessions by President Hosni Mubarak and vowing to bring down his regime through strikes and million-strong marches in Cairo and Alexandria.
In what is seen as a sop to the protesters, a new Cabinet lineup was announced in which widely hated interior minister Habib al-Adly and the previous finance and culture ministers were axed.
But protesters massed in downtown Cairo insisted they would only be satisfied when Mr Mubarak quits, and vowed to step up their efforts to topple his creaking regime.
Organisers announced an indefinite strike and said Tuesday would see a “march of a million” in the capital after a week of revolt in which at least 125 people have been killed.
Another march was called in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria, after national train services were cancelled.
Tens of thousands of protesters carpeted Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of demands for an end to the corruption, deprivation and police oppression indelibly associated with Mr Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
“We will stay in the square, until the coward leaves,” the crowd chanted. The Army has positioned tanks around the area and was checking identity papers but letting protesters in. Civilian popular committee members were also checking papers to make sure no plainclothes police get in. “We are looking for police troublemakers. They want to come in and break our unity,” said a popular committee member who asked
not to be named.
Eid Mohammed, one of the protesters and organisers, said: “It was decided overnight that there will be a million-man march on Tuesday. We have also decided to begin an open-ended general strike.”
The strike was first called by workers at a factory in the canal city of Suez late on Sunday.
Faced with the prospect of untold numbers trying to converge on the capital, the authorities stopped all train traffic with immediate effect on Monday afternoon. The state-owned national carrier EgyptAir said it was cancelling all domestic and international flights from 3 pm local time (6.30 pm IST) to 8 am (11.30 am Tuesday) until further notice, coinciding with a curfew
in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. Some flight times will be changed to take the curfew into account, the airline said.
Faced with the biggest protests of his presidency, an increasingly embattled Mr Mubarak appointed his first-ever vice-president and a new Prime Minister in a desperate attempt to hold on to power.
The new Cabinet unveiled on Monday did little to placate the protesters but they welcomed the departure of Mr Adly, whose notorious security forces have been accused of systematic human rights violations. “We will accept no change other than Mubarak’s departure,” said one protester who asked not to be named.
Another, Rifat Ressat, said: “We want a complete change of government, with a civilian authority.” He too welcomed the departure of Mr Adly. “The interior minister is responsible for all the violence, because it’s the police that opened fire on demonstrators,” said Ressat.
Mr Adly’s ouster was one of the demands of protesters who have been demanding the departure of Mr Mubarak and his regime for the past week. They have also called for an end to corruption and oppression.
Business tycoons close to the regime playing an important role in politics is seen in Egypt as a sign of corruption, while Mr Mubarak’s son and previous heir apparent Gamal is also closely linked to the political-business milieu.
Egypt ordered the riot police back onto the streets nationwide two days after they virtually disappeared and the Army was deployed to deal with the revolt, but few were visible.
The police was seen smiling at motorists and sticking close to each other, a stone’s throw away from burned-out shells of their police vans.
Their two-day vanishing act remains unexplained officially, but it left the city prey to looters and jailbreakers, and residents formed self-defence groups to protect their patches. Many Cairo men are exhausted, taking part in neighbourhood vigilante groups protecting their homes from looters by night and protesting during the day.
Late on Sunday, top dissident Mohamed ElBaradei told a sea of angry protesters in the square that they were beginning a new era. The Nobel laureate was mandated by Egyptian Opposition groups, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate with Mr Mubarak’s
regime. He hailed “a new Egypt in which every Egyptian lives in freedom and dignity.”
“We are on the right path, our strength is in our numbers,” Mr ElBaradei said in his first address on Tahrir Square. “I ask you to be patient, change is coming.”
“We will sacrifice our soul and our blood for the nation,” the angry crowd shouted. “The people want to topple the President.”
The protests against Mr Mubarak’s three-decade rule have shaken Egypt and left at least 125 people dead as the veteran leader clings to power. Several foreign governments said they would evacuate their nationals,
while the United States authorised the departure of embassy families.
Washington, a key ally of Egypt, called on Mr Mubarak to do more to defuse the crisis, with President Barack Obama voicing support for “an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.”
Troops set up checkpoints on roads to riot-hit prisons, stopping and searching cars for prisoners on the run. Many petrol stations are running out of fuel, motorists said, and many bank cash machines have either been looted or no longer work. Banks were shut for a third straight day on Monday.
The turmoil in Egypt is affecting the world economy, with oil prices rising to within a whisker of $100 a barrel on Monday on fears that the flow of oil through the Suez Canal on its way to the West could be affected, analysts said.
And rating agency Moody’s said on Monday that it had downgraded Egypt’s debt rating by one notch to Ba2, and changed the country’s outlook to negative from stable.