Seconds after the nationally televised announcement by Vice President Omar Suleiman, celebrations broke out in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, ground zero of the protest movement, which was packed with some 250,000 protesters. They greeted the news with shouts of "Egypt is free! Egypt is free!"

Car horns honked and people waved Egyptian flags, sang the national anthem and danced in conga lines.

"The Egyptian people made history today!" Hala Abdel Razik, a retired English teacher, told AOL News' Sarah Topol in Tahrir Square. "We still have a long way to go to fix things. We have to start all over again. It's the young people's role, with the help of older people. We're open to new scenarios."

Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy campaigner Mohammed ElBaradei said it was the "greatest" day of his life. "The country has been liberated after decades of repression," the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, according to The Associated Press. He said he hoped for a "beautiful" transfer of power.

Mubarak had desperately attempted to cling to power over the past 18 days of continuous protests. He had offered pro-democracy campaigners numerous concessions, including not running in elections in September. On Thursday, after word spread that he would resign, he went on national TV and announced that he was handing only some of his powers to Suleiman.

But a surge in protests today apparently helped force the military to finally boot the 82-year-old autocrat from office. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in city squares across the nation and -- for the first since the protests began -- staged rallies outside the president's many palaces. Activists also besieged the building that houses state TV and radio in Cairo, in an attempt to end its broadcast of round-the-clock Mubarak propaganda.

Throughout it all, the military stood by, guarding key pieces of infrastructure, but keeping its earlier promise not to fire on protesters.

Before the resignation, demonstrators for the first time staged rallies outside the president's many palaces today. Reports by the BBC and Reuters said Mubarak had left Cairo for his seaside palace at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, far from the angry crowds in the capital.

"What are you waiting for?" one protester yelled at soldiers stationed outside Mubarak's main residence, Oruba, in northern Cairo, according to The Associated Press. "Did you sign an oath and pledge your allegiance to the president or the people?" shouted another member of the 1,000-strong crowd.

Cairo's Tahrir Square was crammed with a crowd that rivaled the quarter-million figure of the biggest protests over the past 18 days. Nearby, more than 1,000 people had formed a human barricade in front of the building that houses state TV and radio, which has broadcast round-the-clock Mubarak propaganda. And at least 100,000 people had gathered in the main square of Egypt's second biggest city, Alexandria.

2/11/11