Jubilant Egyptians pray as post-Mubarak era dawns
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Egyptians woke to a new dawn on Saturday after 30 years of autocratic rule under Hosni Mubarak.
As the muezzin's call to prayer reverberated across Cairo, the sound of horns honking in jubilation grew louder after a night when millions celebrated the fall of the former President.
"The people overthrow the regime". "The revolution of the youths forced Mubarak to leave", said front-page headlines in semi-official al Ahram newspaper.
A wave of people power has roared across the biggest Arab nation, just four weeks after Tunisians toppled their own ageing strongman. Now, across the West Asia and beyond, autocratic rulers are calculating their own chances of survival.
"The January 25 revolution won. Mubarak steps out and the Army rules," official newspaper Al Gomhuria said.
Eighteen days of rallies on Cairo's Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, resisting police assaults and a last-ditch charge by hardliners on camels, brought undreamt of success.
"We are finally going to get a government we choose," said 29-year-old call-centre worker Rasha Abu Omar. "Perhaps we will finally get to have the better country we always dreamed of."
Hours after word flashed out that Mubarak was stepping down and handing over to the army, it was not just Tahrir Square but, it seemed, every street and neighbourhood in Cairo, Alexandria and cities and towns across the country that were packed full.
Through the night, fireworks cracked, cars honked under swathes of red, white and black Egyptian flags, people hoisted their children above their heads. Some took souvenir snaps with smiling soldiers on their tanks on city streets.
All laughed and embraced in the hope of a new era.
INFECTIOUS PEOPLE POWER
Journalists long used to the sullen quiet of the police states that make up much of the West Asia felt the surging joy of the population around them as a palpable, physical sensation.
Relayed by satellite television channels and on internet social networking sites, the euphoria in Egypt flashed around a region where autocrats hold sway from the Atlantic to the Gulf.
It was just eight weeks to the day since a young Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself alight outside a local government building in the provincial city of Sidi Bouzid, protesting in this way at his ill-treatment by the police, who had taken away his livelihood, and at venal, oppressive government.
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