Egypt Unrest Continues- Natural Gas Pipeline Attacked; Egyptian VP's Bodyguards Killed in Assassination Attempt? Foreign Reporters Attacked in Cairo

Egyptian state TV is reporting that saboteurs taking advantage of near lawlessness in some parts of the country have attacked a natural gas pipeline that runs between Egypt and Israel.

Residents of the El Arish area in the North Sinai region of Egypt reported a loud explosion on Saturday. It's not clear the immediate impact the blast had on supplies to Israel, but a state TV correspondent blamed the act on terrorists.

Earlier in the week, President Hosni Mubarak had promised to step down after the September 2011 elections, but that was not enough to assuage most of the demonstrators.

The protests in and around Tahrir Square in Cairo escalated on Thursday when Mubarak supporters approached the square and occupied rooftops above, clashing with the anti-Mubarak demonstrators and pelting them with rocks and chunks of pavement from above.

By Friday morning,the scene had become even more surreal when more pro-Mubarak demonstrators mobilized by horse and camelback [way to live up to the stereotype, gentelmen- NANESB!] and charged into the assembled crowds, whipping and beating some of the anti-Mubarak demonstrators. Some in the crowd had managed to pull the riders off of their mounts and said that their would-be assailants were carrying Police ID. By nightfall, each side was hurling Molotov cocktails at each other and Egyptian soldiers were attempting to disperse crowds by firing warning shots into the air.

There were also incidents of Western journalists being attacked and some news agencies offices being torched. FOX News' Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig and CNN's Anderson Cooper and his camera crew were repeatedly punched and kicked by pro-Mubarak crowds that had descended on them in separate incidents in the capital [Just putting this out here, CNN- How about sending Joy Behar to Cairo??- NANESB!]. The Cairo offices of al Jazeera were torched and it's website was hacked on Friday as well while a Swedish TV reporter was recovering from stab wounds in a Cairo hospital.

Reports are also circulating that there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt this week against Egypt's newly-appointed Vice President, Omar Suleiman. The office of Vice President was vacant when Mubarak appointed him to the position on January 29- Suleiman is also chief of Egypt's intelligence services and would likely be the head of an interim govern. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the attempt, but Egyptian officials said that two of Suleiman's bodyguards were killed and that his motorcade was the target of the would-be assassins.