Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, ending 30 years of rule, has resigned and handed over control of the country to the military, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Friday.
The president "has decided to give up his position as president of the republic," Suleiman said on national TV. He added that the president had charged the higher military council to run affairs in the "tough circumstances that the country is passing through."
After refusing to step down on Thursday, Mubarak finally bowed to a historic 18-day wave of pro-democracy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands.
Stocks rose in reaction to Mubarak's resignation, while oil prices fell .
Prices of gold and U.S. Treasury bonds partly erased early gains as Mubarak's departure partially revived investors' appetite for risk. The U.S. dollar briefly pared gains, but remained strong against a basket of major currencies.
"It looks like the stock market is taking the news well," said Gary Thayer, chief macro strategist with Wells Fargo in St. Louis. "One thing that has weighed on investor sentiment is that the price of oil would go up in the case of political turmoil, and Mubarak's leaving reduces that possibility."
A massive crowd in Cairo's central Tahrir Square exploded into joy, waving Egyptian flags, and car horns and celebratory shots in the air were heard around the city of 18 million in joy after Vice President Suleiman made the announcement just after nightfall.
Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, whose young suporters were among the organizers of the protest movement, told The Associated Press, "This is the greatest day of my life." "The country has been liberated after decades of repression," he said adding that he expects a "beautiful" transition of power.
Earlier Friday, a ruling party official told Reuters Mubarak and his family had left Cairo for the glitzy Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where there is a presidential residence, adding that this proved that power had been handed to Suleiman.
Mubarak had sought to cling to power, handing some of his authorities to Suleiman while keeping his title. But an explosion of protests Friday rejecting the move appeared to have pushed the military into forcing him out completely.
Hundreds of thousands marched throughout the day in cities across the country as soliders stood by, besieging his palace in Cairo and Alexandria and the state TV building.
A governor of a southern province was forced to flee to safety in the face of protests there.
It was the biggest day of protests yet in the upheaval that began Jan. 25, growing from youth activists working on the Internet into a mass movement that tapped into widespread discontent with Mubarak's authoritarian lock on power, corruption, economic woes and widespread disparities between rich and poor.
Outside Mubarak's Oruba Palace in northern Cairo, women on balconies ululated with the joyous tongue-trilling used to mark weddings and births.
"Finally we are free," said Safwan Abo Stat, a 60-year-old in the crowd of protesters at the palace.
"From now on anyone who is going to rule will know that these people are great." Another, Mohammed el-Masry, weeping with joy, said he had spent the past two weeks in Tahrir before marching to the palace Friday.
He was now headed back to the square to join his ecstatic colleagues. "We made it," he gasped.
The question now turned to how the military, Egypt's most powerful institution, will handle the transition in power.
Earlier in the day, the Armed Forces Supreme Council—a body of top generals—vowed to guide the country to greater democracy.
In a statement hours before Suleiman's announcement, it said it was committed "to sponsor the legitimate demands of the people and endeavorfor their implementation within a defined timetable ...until achieving a peaceful transition all through a democratic society aspired by the people."
Abdel-Rahman Samir, one of the youth organizers of the protests, said the protest movement would now open negotiations with the military over democratic reform but vowed protests would continue to ensure change is carried out.
"We still don't have any guarantees yet _ if we end the whole situation now the it's like we haven't done anything," he said.
"So we need to keep sitting in Tahrir until we get all our demands." But, he added, "I feel fantastic....I feel like we have worked so hard, we planted a seed for a yera and a half and now we are now finally sowing the fruits."
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