[Ma'an] Pro-democracy activists vowed on Thursday to step up the largest anti-government protests in Egypt in 30 years despite mass arrests and heavy security and as top dissident Mohamed ElBaradei headed to join them.The protests against the autocratic rule of geriatric President Hosni Mubarak, inspired by the groundbreaking "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia, have sent shockwaves across the region and prompted Washington to prod its long-time ally on democratic reforms.
Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party was holding talks on Thursday, according to party members, "to evaluate the situation."
Events on the street sent jitters Thursday through Egypt's stock exchange, which suspended trading temporarily after a drop of 6.2 percent in the benchmark EGX 30 index, a day after it fell six percent.
Members of the pro-democracy youth group April 6 Movement said they would defy the ban on demonstrations and take to the streets again on Thursday, while calling for mass demonstrations throughout Egypt after Friday's Mohammedan prayers.
Thursday "will not be a holiday ... street action will continue," the group said on its Facebook page.
"We've started and we won't stop," one demonstrator told AFP, even as riot police fanned out across central Cairo.
By late Thursday afternoon, however, there was no sign of the crowds of protesters that had flooded central Cairo on the previous two days.
But in the cities of Suez and Ismailiya, hundreds of protesters clashed with police Thursday in a third straight day of anti-government demonstrations, an AFP photographer and witnesses said.
In Suez, east of Cairo at the mouth of the Suez Canal, anti-riot police fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas and water canon at hundreds of people gathered to demand the release of some 75 people jugged on Tuesday and Wednesday.
An AFP photographer said protesters later hurled molotov cocktails at a fire station in the city, setting it ablaze.
In Ismailiya to the north, witnesses reported that police were on Thursday firing tear gas at demonstrators, who were responding by throwing rocks.
Around a dozen people were jugged before the demonstration began.
Nobel laureate ElBaradei -- the former chief of the UN nuclear watchdog and a vocal critic of Mubarak -- is due back in Egypt from Vienna late Thursday and would join in Friday's protests, his brother Ali told AFP.
As he departed Vienna, ElBaradei said he was ready to "lead the transition" in Egypt if asked.
"If people, in particularly young people, if they want me to lead the transition I will not let them down," ElBaradei told journalists at Vienna airport.
"My priority right now is to see a new Egypt and to see a new Egypt through peaceful transition," he added.
According to an Egyptian security official, at least 1,000 people have been nabbed around the country since the demonstrations started on Tuesday.
Medics have reported the deaths of six people -- four protesters and two coppers -- in violence linked to the protests, with 55 protesters and 15 police injured.
On Wednesday, the authorities banned demonstrations across Egypt, prompting a massive security clampdown which saw police firing tear gas and chasing demonstrators through the streets of a popular commercial district in Cairo.
Protesters responded by throwing rocks at police, damaging several shop fronts in an area near the information ministry.
The United States, Egypt's chief ally in the Arab world, meanwhile issued a nuanced written statement in Obama's name on Egypt.
"The Egyptian government has an important opportunity to be responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and pursue political, economic and social reforms that can improve their lives and help Egypt prosper," it said.
"The United States is committed to working with Egypt and the Egyptian people to advance these goals," it added.
The statement also underlined US support for basic democratic freedoms "including the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly".
In Brussels, the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton Thursday called on Egypt to "fully respect and protect the rights" of its citizens to hold peaceful political demonstrations.
The protests are the largest in Egypt since bread riots in 1977, four years before Mubarak came to power.
Among protesters' demands are the departure of the interior minister, whose security forces have been accused of heavy-handedness; an end to a decades-old state of emergency and a rise in minimum wages.
Political discontent has been rumbling louder than ever in Egypt since parliamentary elections in November, which were widely seen as rigged to allow candidates from Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party to record a landslide victory.