The internet has been closed down in Egypt ahead of the biggest protests yet planned against president Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-rule.

Emboldened by this month's revolt that toppled the authoritarian leader of Tunisia, Egyptians have staged mass protests since Tuesday in an unprecedented outburst of anger against Mr Mubarak.

The angry nationwide demonstrations have swelled into the largest uprising in three decades, in which seven people have been killed and more than 100 injured.

"This is a revolution," one 16-year-old protester said in Suez."Every day we're coming back here."

Internet access was shut down across the country shortly after 12:00am on Friday (local time). Mobile phone text messaging services also appeared to be partially disabled, working only sporadically.

Activists have relied on the internet, especially social media services like Twitter and Facebook to organise their protests.

US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said on Twitter: "We are concerned that communications services, including the internet, social media, and even this tweet are being blocked in Egypt."

US-based internet monitoring firm Renesys said the total shutdown of the internet it recorded early on Friday was "unprecedented in internet history", going far beyond measures taken during Tunisia's protests or the 2009 uprising in Iran.

"Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the internet's global routing table," it said.

"The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map."

A page on Facebook social networking site listed more than 30 mosques and churches where protesters were expected gather.

"Egypt's Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom."

Members of the pro-democracy youth group, April 6 Movement, have called for mass demonstrations after Friday's Muslim prayers.

But the movement is not only being promoted within the mosques, it is also spanning the classes.

It is hoped that if the lower and middle-class Egyptians can bring millions of the poorest people into the protest, then change will occur.

In the same way that these protests were inspired by the Tunisian revolt, the rest of the Arab world is now watching Egypt because it is the most populous and influential of the Arab nations.

Fires burning

In Suez, which has been ground zero for some of the most violent demonstrations, police fired tear gas at protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs into the early hours of Friday. Fires burned in the street, filling the air with smoke.

The city fire station was ablaze. Waves of protesters charged towards a police station deep into the night. Demonstrators dragged away their wounded comrades into alleys.

Security forces shot dead a protester in the north of the Sinai region on Thursday, bringing the death toll to five.

Video images obtained by Reuters showed the man among a small group of protesters some distance from the security forces when he suddenly collapsed with a gunshot wound and was dragged away by other demonstrators.

The video circulated widely on the internet, galvanising anger.

Dr Ben McQueen, an expert on Middle Eastern politics at Monash University in Melbourne, says the deterioration of economic conditions is the catalyst for the unrest.

"It's not so much the political unrest, it's more about unemployment and food prices and these sorts of things," he said.

"All of that is coinciding also with the real establishment of this incredibly large young cohort in the Arab world, the population is very much weighted to people within [the ages of] 15 and 30.

"All of these things sort of coalescing at the same time have created quite a volatile situation in Arab countries that are poor, that are quite populous and have quite ageing leaders and that's a consistent thing we see across Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt and to a lesser extent, in

Jordan as well."