FILE - In this Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011 file photo, A supporter of President Hosni Mubarak, on camel, fights with anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo, Egypt. More Arabs are politically engaged than ever before,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Egyptian opposition protesters are gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's autocratic regime. 
 
 The protesters, mostly led by liberals and secularists, are using the anniversary to stage a show of strength in a bid to force President Mohammed Morsi to amend a disputed constitution drafted by his Islamist allies. They are also demanding freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands are expected to turn out for the rallies planned in Cairo and several major cities. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups are staying off the streets to avoid clashes. 
 
 Friday's rallies come a day after opposition protesters battled police for hours near Tahrir. The clashes injured scores of opposition protesters. ||||| Associated Press Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, bottom, clash Wednesday with opponents, top, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the scene of recent protests that shook the Egyptian regime. 
 
 Violence erupted in Egypt's capital when supporters of President Hosni Mubarak clashed for the first time with protesters, as the regime dug in against demands, from within the country and from Washington, that a transfer of power begin immediately. 
 
 The clashes began hours after Mr. Mubarak announced in a speech late Tuesday that he wouldn't run in elections slated for later this year. They gained intensity during the day in central Cairo's Tahrir Square, with the two sides rushing at each other, wielding clubs and throwing Molotov cocktails. Some Mubarak supporters charged protesters on horseback and camelback, a tactic the regime has employed against past demonstrations. Clutches of soldiers looked on, doing little to intervene. 
 
 The Obama administration, watching the violence, began pushing harder for Mr. Mubarak to quickly step aside and make way for a transitional government, people familiar with the matter said. 
 
 The U.S. began to chart a course of reforms and, for the first time since large-scale protests erupted in Egypt more than a week ago, made it clear that Washington and Cairo—close allies for three decades—are now on different tracks. 
 
 An interim government, made up of opposition parties and elements of the current regime, could buy time to rewrite the Egyptian constitution, allow opposition parties to organize, and lay the groundwork for elections later this year, say supporters of the idea. 
 
 Washington's stance pitted the U.S. against Mr. Mubarak, who has indicated he would stick around until after elections, and against those among the Egyptian opposition who are pushing for much speedier elections. 
 
 Egypt's Strongman View Interactive Take a look back at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's career. 
 
 Egypt's Foreign Ministry, underscoring the sense that the regime was trying to regain the upper hand, rejected President Barack Obama's call for an immediate start to a political transition. The ministry said "foreign parties" aimed to "incite the internal situation in Egypt." 
 
 But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, said when the White House says change is needed now, "'now' means yesterday." 
 
 Leading opposition figures also dug in, repeating their rejection of Mr. Mubarak's offer to step down after negotiating political reforms and holding elections, which have been scheduled for September. "Once he's out of the country" the demonstrators will go home, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview. 
 
 Opposition leaders hadn't previously called for Mr. Mubarak's departure from the country; other officials in Mr. ElBaradei's alliance said on Wednesday that Mr. Mubarak could remain in Egypt as a normal citizen if he gave up power. 
 
 More than 600 people were wounded and three died in Wednesday's clashes, according to the Health Ministry. 
 
 Clashes were continuing to flare into the early hours of Thursday morning, as fires continued to burn around Tahrir Square. Pro-regime demonstrators blockaded off the northern part of the square with tanks and burned trucks. Molotov cocktails, thrown from a bridge nearby where pro-Mubarak protesters had assembled, set a building on fire. On Thursday morning, protest organizer Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three more dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 Journal Photos: Clashes in Cairo View Slideshow Guy Martin for The Wall Street Journal Anti-government protesters clashed with supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square. Photos: Wednesday Protests View Slideshow Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press Pro-government demonstrators, bottom, watched as cars burned during clashes with anti-government demonstrators, top, behind barriers, in Tahrir Square. Regional Upheaval View Interactive A succession of rallies and demonstrations, in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria have been inspired directly by the popular outpouring of anger that toppled Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. See how these uprising progressed. 
 
 The dueling rhetoric and the street fighting appeared to be leading toward another large showdown on Friday, when opposition figures vowed to call another rally. 
 
 The turmoil in Egypt continued to fan tensions across the region. In Jordan, where weeks of protests convinced King Abdullah II to dismiss the government and name a new prime minister on Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood political organization publicly rejected his new choice and demanded yet another. 
 
 In Israel, which has relations with only Jordan and Egypt in the Arab world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the situation in Egypt could affect Israel's security for years to come. 
 
 Many foreign companies operating in Egypt continued to cut back on operations. 
 
 Procter & Gamble Co., for example, said its two Egypt plants remained closed, and the foreign national employees it evacuated over the past few days haven't returned to Egypt. 
 
 The government restored Internet service Wednesday, having cut off almost all service to deprive protesters of an organizing tool. 
 
 But the counterattack on behalf of the regime extended to social networks such as Facebook and email messages—the mediums antiregime demonstrators used so effectively in the early stages of the protests more than a week ago. 
 
 "Please spread the word to your relatives, colleagues and friends. Mubarak's speech was enough," read one message posted on a Facebook site. "He deserves to leave his position in a respectable way, as much as we deserve a safe, secured and stable Country....Don't 4get that we have a real enemies waiting Egypt to fall:( SAVE THE COUNTRY NOW!!!" 
 
 It was unclear where such messages were coming from. 
 
 The mobilization of government backers began almost immediately after Mr. Mubarak's speech late Tuesday. Crowds of government backers soon began showing up amid antigovernment protesters in the northern city of Alexandria. 
 
 In Cairo, by midday Wednesday, thousands of regime supporters marched on Tahrir Square, pushing out roughly equal numbers of antiregime demonstrators camped there. 
 
 Bloody scenes of street battles were common. Pro- and anti-Mubarak groups faced off, chanting slogans at each other, fighting and hurling missiles. 
 
 Protesters at two entrances to Tahrir Square came under attack from men heaving rocks and running into the protesters with horses and camels. 
 
 Other regime supporters came armed with metal rods, which they wielded against protesters. 
 
 At the downtown entrance to the square, groups of Mubarak supporters started organizing charges, running up and down the street. Protesters responded by forming a human barrier three to four people deep. 
 
 Mohamed Abdu, a 22-year-old graduate of Helwan University and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, grew visibly shaken as the men began hurling rocks over the human barricade. One man on the protesters' side pulled out a pair of large light bulbs from his backpack and threw them at the Mubarak supporters. He was quickly shouted down by protesters chanting "peace." 
 
 As the sun set, gunshots could be heard near the square; a tree and building adjacent to the renowned Egyptian Museum caught on fire. 
 
 While the regime has been accused in the past of paying workers to attack antiregime protesters, many of the government backers interviewed on the streets Wednesday seemed sincere in expressing either undiluted support for Mr. Mubarak or a sense that demonstrations against him should now end. 
 
 Sayed Mohammed Sayed, a 37-year-old supporter of Mr. Mubarak, said the protesters pushed things too far by refusing to back down after the president agreed to pursue reforms and eventually step down. 
 
 "The situation is unacceptable," the air-conditioner technician said. "The majority of protesters are young people and aren't aware of their actions and consequences." 
 
 Ibrahim Saadouni, 47, a lawyer, said he believed the violence was started by the thugs for hire that are a standard feature of Egyptian electoral politics. "They've come to create a civil war," Mr. Saadouni said. "They're doing this to make war so the army will step in to end the demonstrations, because we won't leave." 
 
 Egyptian state-controlled television said that Muslim Brotherhood members were responsible for most of the violence in the square, including throwing incendiary devices—accusations the Muslim Brotherhood denied. 
 
 The Obama administration condemned attacks by pro-Mubarak forces. "We are deeply concerned about attacks on the media and peaceful demonstrators," Mr. Gibbs said. 
 
 —Adam Entous, Margaret Coker, Marc Champion, Tamer El-Ghobashy and Christopher Rhoads contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@dowjones.com and Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com ||||| The US secretary of state said Egyptian government should allow protesters to demonstrate over poverty and repression. 
 
 Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has said that widespread anti-government protests over poverty and government repression in Egypt represent an opportunity for the 30-year administration of president Hosni Mubarak to implement "political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people". In unusually blunt remarks regarding the longtime US ally, delivered on Wednesday, Clinton also said that the Mubarak government should not prevent peaceful protests or block social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook, which have helped Egyptians plan and spread news about the unrest. The Egyptian government has reportedly been doing both: Security forces continued to confront protesters with batons, tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets on Wednesday night, and Facebook and Twitter have both acknowledged ongoing disturbances to their services in Egypt. Protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police in Cairo, Al Jazeera's Dan Nolan reported from the capital, while similar petrol bomb attacks were reported in the eastern Red Sea port city of Suez, where three protesters died on Tuesday. On one occasion in Cairo, a car pulled to a stop behind a police truck, but one of the occupants missed the truck with his throw and struck a nearby pillar, setting it alight. Some protesters in a crowd of around 100 at Egypt's foreign ministry also threw petrol bombs, Nolan said. "The streets of Cairo behind me tonight are a very tense and a very chaotic and a very dramatic place to be," Nolan said. Social media shut down, clashes in Suez In Suez, severe fighting was reported between police and protesters. A crowd used petrol bombs to set fire to a government building and attempted unsuccessfully to do the same to a local office of the ruling National Democratic Party. Medical personnel in Suez reported on Wednesday night that 55 protesters and 15 police officers had been injured. "Protesters throwing burning bottle bomb into one armored police car, setting it ablaze," read one tweet sent by Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights, who was in Suez. "Police descends onto the streets and [are] not remaining impartial. [They have] injured about 30 protesters so far," he wrote in another. In Cairo, protests were sporadic, but hundreds still took to the streets. Around 500 people were protesting on the steps and roof of the lawyers union in central Cairo earlier, chanting anti-government slogans, with another 500 listening and watching from the street, Nolan said. Thousands of riot police "flooded the street" and used batons to clear out the observing crowds whenever they came too close or grew too large, our correspondent said. Lacking reliable access to social media, protesters have relied on word of mouth and mobile phones to coordinate their demonstrations, Nolan said. Twitter confirmed that its services had been blocked in Egypt beginning at 6 pm local time (1600 GMT) on Tuesday, while Jillian York, who oversees the Herdict web monitoring service at Harvard University, said that Egyptian Facebook users confirmed to her that the website was blocked. Facebook, however, said it had not recorded "major changes" in traffic from Egypt. "[Protests are] certainly not in the numbers we saw yesterday," Nolan said. "There was a reasonable amount of tolerance shown for these rallies yesterday. But today it is virtually a zero-tolerance police from the Egyptian security forces." 'The name of the game is reform' Hundreds of protesters have been arrested since a planned "day of anger" on Tuesday set off country-wide demonstrations; the interior ministry said it had detained 860 and promised that no protests will be tolerated. Three protesters in Suez, an eastern Red Sea port city, died on Tuesday, and one policeman in Cairo was also killed. The White House said it was monitoring the situation in Egypt "quite closely," but unlike Clinton did not call for reform. Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for president Barack Obama, told reporters on Wednesday that the government should "demonstrate its responsiveness to the people of Egypt" by recognising their "universal rights." Asked whether the United States still "backed" Mubarak, Gibbs said only that "Egypt is a strong ally." Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said that he believes "the Arab citizen is angry, is frustrated." "That is the point," he said. "The name of the game is reform." 'Egging them on' The Egyptian government appeared uneager to make any concessions, as it continued to send security forces into the streets of Cairo and Suez to break up protests on Wednesday night. In pictures: 'Day of Anger' Update: Egypt protests Unrest in social media Debate: First Tunisia, now Egypt? Can Egyptians revolt? Egypt’s protests on Twitter Social media chronicles protests Pictures: Anger in Egypt But prime minister Ahmed Nazif, in a statement to a state news agency earlier in the day, did say that the country's leadership was committed to allowing freedom of expression "by legitimate means." On Wednesday evening, thousands of demonstrators were spread throughout downtown Cairo after being dispersed by security forces. Many had gathered on Gelaa Street, near central Tahrir Square - the site of a violent early morning confrontation between security forces and protesters who had been planning to sleep the night in defiance of the government. Police fired tear gas and broke up concrete to use as rocks to throw at protesters and "egg them on," Al Jazeera's Adam Makary reported. Protesters lit a fire - possibly by burning a tyre - in the middle of a nearby street and were pelting police officers with stones, Al Jazeera correspondent Rawya Rageh said. Around 500 protesters had been arrested over the past 24 hours in an effort to clamp down on the public unrest, the interior ministry said in a statement. The ministry had said earlier on Wednesday that new demonstrations would not be allowed. In Mansoura, a working-class down north of Cairo in the Nile Delta, blogger Mohamed Hamama said the police had been "very aggressive" during protests. "Major arrests have occurred, they are now being interrogated, a lot of people have either been injured, beaten up or exposed to tear gas," he said. "I think more and more protests will be staged. Many refuse to stop till they receive a good standard of living." Brotherhood blamed The government on Tuesday officially blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's technically banned but largest opposition movement, for fomenting the protests. The Brotherhood had earlier said that it would not officially participate in the January 25 protests, and it denied the government's accusation. With just eight months to go before a presidential election that could see the ailing Mubarak run for re-election or attempt to hand power to a successor, protesters in Egypt were demanding solutions to the country's grinding poverty and an end to onerous emergency national security laws in place since the 1981 assassination of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat. Mubarak, 82, has not appointed a deputy since he became president and is widely thought to be grooming his son Gamal to succeed him. "Down with Hosni Mubarak, down with the tyrant," chanted the crowds. "We don't want you!"
– Two years after protests began in Cairo that would lead to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, protesters are once again gathering in Tahrir Square, reports the AP. Led by liberals and secularists, the protesters are now demonstrating against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which they accuse of threatening Egypt's young democracy. Hundreds of thousands are expected to march in protests across Egypt today. Police and protesters clashed yesterday and early this morning in Cairo, with demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and firecrackers and police responding with tear gas, reports Reuters. Egyptian officials said 25 people had been hurt since fighting flared yesterday. The Muslim Brotherhood says it will not stage counterprotests in order to avoid increasing the unrest.