Egyptians surround burned Bab Sharq police station in Alexandria, Egypt, Friday, Jan.28, 2011. Hundreds of anti-government protesters have returned to Cairo's central Tahrir Square and other cities, chanting slogans against Hosni Mubarak . (Ahmed Mohammed/ Associated Press)

Bio: Mohammed Nour Eldin is a network engineer in Cairo, and agreed to give his account of the Egyptian protests in a phone interview with CBCNews.ca.

*Note: This interview has been edited for length.

My Story: We basically went to the dark ages here: All cellphones are down, no messaging, no internet service. Yesterday night they blocked texting. Shortly after that, they blocked BlackBerry service and then the internet went down around 12:30 a.m. At noon, around 12:05, they took all cellphones offline.

Nobody has said anything as to when the service will be back. As for the networks, they told us they were forced by the government to take the service down.

Are you participating in the protests?

After Friday prayers, it all started.

Protests started with about 20 people, and as I passed by, people started coming down from their homes, and the crowd grew larger.

Police were shooting tear gas at us, and it escalated to rubber bullets after that. A little bit later on, police officers went and started throwing rocks at us from the top of a bridge. At one point, they started firing in the air to scare us away.

The National Democratic Party building has been burnt down. The fear is that it's right next to the Egyptian Museum. That's what they're concentrating on right now, trying to put the fire out.

When I'm out protesting, I'm not protesting for myself. I seem to get all my rights perfectly. But, you know, there are a lot of people here that are below the poverty line, and life is hard for them.