Unknown assailants opened Cairo’s Tahrir Square to traffic early on Thursday, attacking the protesters who had camped there since November.

Eyewitnesses have said that more than 100 people, some whom were armed while others in trucks and motorcycles, raided the square from Talat Harb in the early hours of Thursday and torched the tents of protesters and chased them out, reported the state news agency MENA.

The eyewitnesses added that the attack resulted in the injury of two people who were transferred to the field hospital to receive medical attention.

Security forces had attempted to disperse the sit-in a few times, by removing the barbed wire and barriers from the entrances leading to the square, over the past four months.

The symbolic square where an uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011 was centralized has witnessed an open-ended sit-in since President Mohamed Mursi issued a decree in November that his opponents believe grants him sweeping powers.