CLOSE to 500 people have been detained in Egypt in the last few days after protests.
According to human rights activists, they are protesting against alleged government corruption.
Demonstrations were reported in Cairo, Alexandria and several other cities on Friday night, and in the port city of Suez since Saturday.
The authorities have not yet released an official number of arrests.
Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, there has been a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, and protests are very rare.
Public gatherings of more than ten people without government approval have been banned since 2013 after al-Sisi led the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, Mohammed Morsi.
The BBC is reporting that at least 60,000 people – most of them members of Morsi’s now-outlawed Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood – were reported to have been detained in the past six years; hundreds have been handed preliminary death sentences by courts, and activist say hundreds more have gone missing in apparent forced disappearances.
