Thousands of woman marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square.

"Drag me, strip me, my brothers' blood will cover me!" they chanted. "Where is the field marshal?" they demanded, referring to Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council holding onto power here. "The girls of Egypt are here."

The event may have been the biggest women's demonstration in Egypt's history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule.

The women's chants were evidently heard at military headquarters as well. On Tuesday evening, the ruling military council offered an abrupt apology.