Fresh violence rocks Egypt’s Tahrir Square, protesters blame Mubarak loyalists (VIDEO)

Violent clashes between police and protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square spilled into a second day Wednesday, leaving more than 1,000 people injured in scenes reminiscent of the bloody uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

Riot police deployed around the Interior Ministry fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators who responded with firebombs and stones, witnesses said.

Volunteer doctors and nurses treated injured people on sidewalks while others were rushed away in ambulances.

Wednesday's clashes were smaller than those the previous evening, when some 5,000 protesters battled the police for hours, according to The Associated Press.

Police had left the area by early afternoon and the groups of bare-chested teenage boys used stones and scrap metal to block traffic from entering the square.

"Thugs, thugs… The square is controlled by thugs," an old man chanted, according to Reuters.

The violence is evidence of a widening rift between many Egyptians and the police, who are blamed for human rights abuses during Mubarak's authoritarian rule.

Protesters are demanding Egypt's transitional military-led government speed up the prosecution of police accused of brutality during the protests in Tahrir Square that forced Mubarak to step down.

GlobalPost reports from Cairo: Egypt: Dozens injured in latest Cairo clashes

Many of those involved in the demonstrations were relatives of people injured and killed by Mubarak loyalists during the violence that surrounded the veteran leader's ouster earlier this year, AFP news agency reported.

Nearly 850 people were killed during the popular revolt that brought an end to Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Witnesses told AFP that buses unloaded young men armed with sticks and knives, and accused loyalists of the old regime of stirring up the trouble.

Activists called for an open-ended sit-in in the square, while the ruling military council warned of a plot to destabilize the country.

“The regrettable incidents in Tahrir Square … are designed to destabilize the country and pit the revolutionaries against the police,” the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said in a statement.

The clashes “have no reason behind them except to destabilize Egypt’s security and stability in accordance with a carefully thought out and organized scheme,” it said.

Protesters chanted slogans late Tuesday calling for the sacking of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt's post-Mubarak transitional ruling body.

Ordinary Egyptians who first took to the streets to demand the overthrow of Mubarak, have begun to shift their anger to the ruling military council, accusing it of using Mubarak-era tactics to stifle dissent, AFP reported.