If I was a protester in Egypt right now, I’d be terrified. Egypt is rounding up and removing the witnesses to what is likely about to happen.

Armed supporters of President Hosni Mubarak attacked foreign journalists, punching them and smashing their equipment. Men who protesters said were plainclothes police officers shut down news media outlets that had been operating in buildings overlooking Tahrir Square.

The concerted effort to remove journalists lent a sense of foreboding to events in the square, where battles continued between the protesters and the Mubarak supporters, who human rights workers and protesters say are being paid and organized by the government. People bringing food, water and medicine to the protesters in the square were being stopped by Mubarak supporters, who confiscated what they had and threw some of it into the Nile.

This first-hand account from the UK Independent’s Robert Fisk describes the situation in Egypt in chilling detail.

“President” Hosni Mubarak’s counter-revolution smashed into his opponents yesterday in a barrage of stones, cudgels, iron bars and clubs, an all-day battle in the very centre of the capital he claims to rule between tens of thousands of young men, both – and here lies the most dangerous of all weapons – brandishing in each other’s faces the banner of Egypt. It was vicious and ruthless and bloody and well planned, a final vindication of all Mubarak’s critics and a shameful indictment of the Obamas and Clintons who failed to denounce this faithful ally of America and Israel.

The fighting around me in the square called Tahrir was so terrible that we could smell the blood. The men and women who are demanding the end of Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship – and I saw young women in scarves and long skirts on their knees, breaking up the paving stones as rocks fell around them – fought back with an immense courage which later turned into a kind of terrible cruelty.

These are the sorts of things that happens when autocrats are warming up for a replay of Tiananmen Square.

Which is an excellent strategy if what you hope to do is hand your country over to Islamists, rather than democracy proponents.

(Late Addition: Friday, Feb. 4, 4:51 p.m.): Indications today are that violent Mubarek supporters have skipped the big Friday Egyptian protest, leaving anti-government protesters to demonstrate peacefully. A hopeful sign….