Egyptian police forces have arrested 65 people while removing metal barriers and barbed wire from the streets leading to Tahrir Square in Cairo, reported Ahram's Arabic news website.

Protesters had erected the barriers following clashes in the area last November.

Police forces, in coordination with the Cairo governorate and the General Authority for Cleanliness and Beautification, removed early Tuesday morning the barriers blocking the streets leading to Tahrir Square, opening the square to traffic.  

According to state news agency MENA, a source from the police said that street-vendors in the square "attacked security forces and threw Molotov cocktails and stones at them to stop them from opening the square to traffic."

"Police arrested them and confiscated the Molotov cocktails, weapons and chains they had on them," the source claimed.

However, police sources also said that they "did not attack the protesters or their tents in the grassy verge in the centre of the square or in the area in front of the Mogamaa [a government building]."

Meanwhile, the concrete walls in streets near Tahrir Square, put up by the authorities to stop protesters reaching the interior ministry building, the parliament and other vital institutions, remain in place.

A number of protesters have been holding a sit-in in Tahrir Square since 22 November when President Morsi issued a controversial constitutional declaration that critics said rendered his decisions above judicial intervention.

Protesters have blocked vehicle traffic from entering the square since then, putting barbed wire and metal barriers across the roads leading to the square.

Several negotiations between the police and the protesters to open the square had not yielded positive results.  

Most recently, police negotiated with the protesters on Saturday in an attempt to open the square in exchange for removing the concrete walls in nearby streets, but the negotiations were not successful.