Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, the Egyptian nude blogger, was beaten up by an angry crowd in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egyptian TV reported Monday.

The video, also posted on YouTube, shows a young girl in Western clothes being mauled, pushed and dragged away during a sit-in the square, where demonstrators have been rallying against the military regime for days.

The channel says the victim was Elmhady, the activist who in the past few weeks stirred a controversy in the Arab world by posting pictures of herself naked on Twitter. The identification was confirmed by viewers in their comments and by several people on the social network.

However, the last entry on Aliaa's Facebook page was 10 hours after the video went on air and makes no mention of the incident. It simply reads, "no one knows my whereabouts, and whoever tries to attack me will get what they deserve."

The blogger, who faces a lawsuit along with her boyfriend and blogger Kareem Amer for inciting indecency and insulting Islam, made headlines this month for a series of naked pictures that she published on Twitter under her real name in a protest against Islamic extremism. Her move sparked a heated debate on Twitter.

The hash tag #NudePhotoRevolutionary went viral after Ahmed Awadalla, who works in the field of human rights, health, sexuality and gender,, tweeted: "@3awadalla: A feminist #Jan25 revolutionary posted her nude photo on the internet to express her freedom. I'm totally taken aback by her bravery".

Elmahdy, only 20 years old and a student at the American University of Cairo, defines herself as "Secular, Liberal, Feminist, Vegetarian, Individualist Egyptian". In a tweet, she said "I took my nude photo myself in my parent's home months before I met @Kareemamer [her boyfriend] and I'm atheist since I was 16".

"My view is that the veil is not a personal choice in Egypt, but the results of religious and social pressure," she said on Facebook. "The women with head veil that I know wear it because of their families or because they don't want to be beaten in the streets. I don't see why they always dictate to women, and not to men, what they should wear."

Last week, U.S.-Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy, who is a columnist for Canada's Toronto Star, Israel's The Jerusalem Report and Denmark's Politiken, was arrested and detained by Egyptian police. After her release, Elthawy revealed she suffered a brutal sexual and physical assault at the hand of the state's riot police. She remained inside Cairo's Interior Ministry for 12 hours and said her time in detention left her with two broken wrists.

She also said that security officials repeatedly insulted her and grabbed her breast and genitals.

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