What began as a widespread call for a general strike ended as the police cracked down across the nation, dispatching thousands of riot troops, arresting more than 200 demonstrators and fighting with protesters in the north.

While two schools were burned and more than 150 people were reported injured in the northern town of Mahalla al-Kobra on Sunday, it was the eerie emptiness of the normally teeming streets of Cairo that signaled the depth of discontent with President Hosni Mubarak’s government.

The calls for a strike, which spread quickly across the country mostly by cellphone messages and word of mouth, underscored a new challenge to the government’s monopoly on power: rising public outrage and a growing willingness by workers and professionals to press their demands by striking.

In Cairo, many stores were closed and hundreds of students protested at three universities. Riot police officers massed in the central Tahrir Square and stood in formation outside the lawyers’, doctors’ and journalists’ syndicates. At the lawyers’ syndicate, a few hundred protesters stood on the roof and on a balcony chanting “Down, down, Hosni Mubarak.”

In Mahalla, the center of the nation’s textile industry, riot police fired tear gas at stone-throwing crowds. Angry demonstrators set fire to two schools, a tourism company and a truck carrying subsidized food, officials said.

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And on Menassat:

The revolution may not be televised – at least not on Egypt’s state-run TV – but you can be sure it will have its group on Facebook. Undeterred by last Sunday’s security crackdown, Egypt’s cyber-dissidents are calling for new anti-government protests on May 4, president Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.

Read more here.