Egyptian security authorities on Tuesday carried out a pre-planned block of Twitter, a social networking website, to impede wide-scale anti-regime protests across the country on 25 January, sources say.

A Facebook invitation earlier this month called for major protests during Egypt's Police Day over rising prices, unemployment and reform, under the slogan "Day of Anger."

Twitter users said they were unable to access their personal pages until Wednesday morning. The website confirmed it was blocked. "We believe that a free sharing of information is beneficial for societies and helps governments to better communicate with their peoples," read a statement from Twitter's managing company, without further details.

Months ago, Al-Masry Al-Youm published the details of a meeting between security officials, NTRA representatives and internet providers to lay down plans to block those websites which activists use extensively to coordinate their efforts.

Participants at the meeting also discussed ways to make page failures appear unintentional. These plans, however, were not implemented before the 25 January protests.

Translated from the Arabic Edition.