Egyptian farmers join protests blocking a main highway and railway. Homeless slum dwellers protest

Worker strikes spread, add to Egypt turmoil
At least 4 killed in clashes in western province; protesters repudiate VP
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
February 9, 2011

CAIRO — Thousands of state workers and poor Egyptians went on strike and protested around the country on Wednesday over their economic woes, adding to unrest sewn by anti-government activists seeking to oust President Hosni Mubarak.

Violence also escalated. Four people were killed and several suffered gunshot wounds in clashes between security forces and about 3,000 protesters in a western province of Egypt, the state news agency MENA and security sources said.

The protest in New Valley, about 300 miles south of Cairo, was the first sizeable anti-Mubarak gathering in that area reported by security sources.

In the southern province of Assiut, about 8,000 people, mainly farmers, set barricades of flaming palm trees to block the main highway and railway to Cairo to complain of bread shortages. They then drove off the governor by pelting his van with stones. Hundreds of slum dwellers in the Suez Canal city of Port Said set fire to part of the governor's headquarters in anger over lack of housing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41486277/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa

The Egyptian movement for democratic rights and economic justice just seems to keep growing and building involving ever larger sectors of the population, working people in the cities, farmers, professionals, the homeless, etc., BBI