Neil MacFarquhar describes it:
Demonstrators for and against President Ali Abdullah Saleh fought a seventh straight day of running street battles on Thursday and police fired automatic rifles into the air to try to keep the sides apart.
The violence continued a catalog of unrest Wednesday, when continued strikes over long-suppressed grievances continued in Egypt and a demonstrator’s funeral in Iran turned into a brief tug of war between the government and its opponents.
Even in heavily policed Libya, pockets of dissent emerged in the main square of Benghazi, with people calling for an end to the 41-year rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Protesters using the now familiar weapon of social networking sites to organize dissent called for a “Day of Rage” on Thursday in Tripoli to intensify the challenge to Colonel Qaddafi.