Both sides gear up for Friday's showdown in Cairo

CAIRO - The government arrested prominent opposition figures and deployed an elite special operations force in Cairo early Friday, hours before an anticipated new wave of antigovernment demonstrations set to follow Friday's prayers.

The counterterror force, rarely seen on the streets, took up positions in strategic locations, including central Tahrir Square, site of the biggest demonstrations this week against the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

In addition, Internet service was disrupted, with no Internet traffic going into or out of the country after 12:30 a.m. local time Friday.

After midnight, security forces arrested at least five leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, and five former members of parliament, according to lawyer Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud.

A day earlier, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has become a leading opponent of Mubarak, returned to Cairo on Thursday in an attempt to galvanize the youth-led street protests that began on Tuesday. "I am going back to Cairo, and back onto the streets because, really, there is no choice," he wrote before setting off from Europe.

Smoke rose over the city of Suez on Thursday as protesters torched a fire station and looted weapons that they then turned on police. In the northern Sinai area, several hundred Bedouins and police exchanged gunfire, killing a 17-year-old man.

Raising the stakes, the Muslim Brotherhood said it intends to end days of inaction and enter fully into the protests on Friday, which it called a "general day of rage for the Egyptian nation."