CAIRO - One Egyptian kissed the ground. Another rolled in ecstasy in the grass outside a presidential palace.
People wept, jumped, screamed and hugged with a joy they had never known. Cairo erupted in a cacophony of celebration: fireworks, car horns and gunshots in the air.
President Hosni Mubarak resigned and handed power to the military on Friday, and Egypt held its biggest party in decades.
"The people have toppled the regime," chanted demonstrators, whose 18 days of swelling protests tipped Egypt into a crisis the autocratic government could not undo.
"This is the happiest day in my generation," said Ali al-Tayab, a demonstrator who paid tribute to those who died in clashes with police and Mubarak supporters. "To the martyrs, this is your day."
At a presidential palace in Cairo, where demonstrators had gathered in the thousands, people flashed the V-for-victory sign and shouted, "Be happy, Egyptians, today is a feast" and "He stepped down."
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They handed out candy. Many prayed and declared: "God is great."
Crowds packed Tahrir Square, the scene of massive protests against Mubarak that began on Jan. 25. The celebrations continued early Saturday, with throngs of people milling around in downtown Cairo.
A huge poster hanging in the square read, "Breaking news: The people have brought down the regime."
Some soldiers who were stationed at the square ran into the crowd to celebrate, and protesters lifted them onto their shoulders. Other troops stayed at their posts, watching the scene in awe. People posed with them for photographs in front of tanks. Flag-waving children climbed onto the vehicles.
Elsewhere across the Middle East, revelers swept joyously into the streets. From Beirut to Gaza, tens of thousands handed out candy, set off fireworks and unleashed celebratory gunfire, and the governments of Jordan, Iraq and Sudan sent their blessings.
Even in Israel, which had watched Egypt's 18-day uprising against Mubarak with some trepidation, a former Cabinet minister said Mubarak did the right thing.
"The street won. There was nothing that could be done. It's good that he did what he did," former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who knew Mubarak well and spoke to him just a day earlier, told Israel TV's Channel 10.
The success of Egypt's protesters in ousting a longtime ruler came less than a month after a pro-democracy movement in Tunisia pushed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14.
The breakneck speed of developments, after decades of authoritarian rule in many Arab countries, left some of those celebrating Friday wondering where regime change might come next.
"We are very happy today that we were able to overcome the dictator Hosni Mubarak. Tomorrow will be the turn of the dictators in the entire Arab world," said Issam Allawi, an Egyptian celebrating with dozens outside the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut.
In Tunisia, cries of joy and the thundering honking of horns greeted the announcement.
"God delivered our Egyptian brothers from this dictator," said Yacoub Youssef, one of those celebrating in the capital of Tunis.
On Lebanon's Al-Manar TV, the station run by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah faction, Egyptian anchor Amr Nassef, who was once imprisoned in Egypt for alleged ties to Islamists, cried on the air. "Allahu Akbar (God is great), the pharaoh is dead. Am I dreaming? I'm afraid to be dreaming," he said.
Celebrations were also held in several cities in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, where protesters have also taken on the government of longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. In the capital, Sanaa, more than 3,000 people marched from Sanaa University to the Egyptian Embassy.
In Baghdad, lawmakers from all of Iraq's major political parties cheered Mubarak's resignation as a win for democracy - a system still in its infancy in that nation.
