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Saturday, March 29, 2003
Muslim wrath over Iraq war shakes Mideast on weekly day of prayers (1:01 pm)
TEHRAN -- Thousands of angry and defiant demonstrators across the Middle East protest against the US-led war on Iraq Friday following weekly prayers during which clerics called for a holy war on US troops.
In Iran, Iraq's former foe in a 1980-1988 war, hundreds of demonstrators stoned the British embassy, breaking windows in the compound after overturning an empty guard post at the entrance, witnesses said.
They were among tens of thousands who marched at the call of the authorities, shouting "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and the more uncommonly heard slogan "Death to Britain."
The demonstration was the biggest so far in Iran against the assault on neighboring Iraq and it did not spare Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was blamed for inviting the US and British invasion of his country.
A government statement authorizing the protest said Iran "despite its opposition to the Baath regime (of Saddam) cannot remain indifferent to the savage massacre of our Muslim neighbors."
Hundreds of Iranians also staged a protest around the Sitt Zeinab Shiite Muslim shrine outside Damascus calling for an end to the war on Iraq and to the "Israeli aggression" in the Palestinian territories, Sana news agency said.
In the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, thousands of demonstrators also took to the streets in a rare protest, waving Iraqi flags and chanting "America is the enemy of God!" an AFP journalist reported.
In nearby Bahrain, some 3,000 people joined anti-war rally in Muharraq, one of the islands of the archipelago, which is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Chanting "Death to America" and "You, Americans, get back to your own country!" the group marched through town. A few hundred demonstrators broke off toward the military section of the international airport where US troops and equipment are deployed.
Police intervened and calmed the crowd, which dispersed without incident.
In Jordan's flashpoint southern Islamist stronghold of Maan around 10,000 marched on the city center fueled by calls issued by prayer leaders for a jihad, or holy war, against Americans, residents said.
Protesters chastised Arab leaders including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, accusing him of being "a US agent" and warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair "Iraq will destroy you completely," one resident said.
Portraits of Saddam and al-Qaeda terror group mastermind Osama bin Laden were held up and, in an unprecedented move, protesters were heard chanting praise for
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who firmly opposes the war.
There were no reports of clashes but security forces fired tear gas grenades to prevent a small group of protesters from charging the main police station, residents said.
Protesters also marched in Amman and other Jordanian cities, accusing Arab leaders of "selling Iraq for a few dollars."
In Cairo, some 15,000 Egyptians marched behind a huge Iraqi flag in a protest organized by Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP) and opposition groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Emerging from Al-Azhar Mosque, one of the most cherished in the Islamic world, a group of protesters assembled around Muslim Brotherhood leader Maamoun al-Hodeiby shouted: "Jihad, Jihad."
Many held copies of the Koran open to the page of the verse that calls for Jihad after some prayer leaders implicitly called on Muslims to stand by Iraq.
"It is the duty of Muslims to support their brethren everywhere," the imam in Al-Nur Mosque in Cairo's Abbasiya neighborhood.
Hundreds of anti-riot troops deployed in Cairo's central Tahreer Square to protect the nearby US embassy, but the protests across town were peaceful.
Calls for jihad also rang out in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli where 60,000 people, according to police, took to the streets after the prayers.
The protesters, whose ranks were quickly swelled by thousands of Palestinians from nearby refugee camps, hailed "the resistance of Iraq's people against the invaders."
Hundreds of policemen kept the protesters away from US fast food chains, and they gathered in a fairground where one group set ablaze an effigy of Bush while another paraded a donkey draped in US and British colors.
Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt also led an anti-war protest in the southern Lebanese town of Hasbaya, attended by 3,000 people, including 200 clerics.
Protests also swept the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with 20,000 people gathered in Gaza City's Nasser district in response to calls from Islamists groups.
Waving Iraqi flags, the demonstrators condemned the United States, Britain and Israel, urging the Saddam to "Strike Tel Aviv" -- recalling the Scud missiles, which Iraqi forces fired at the Jewish state during the 1991 Gulf War.
Saddam is a popular among the Palestinians and provides financial aid to families of suicide bombers, those killed by Israel's forces in the uprising and those whose houses are demolished by the Israeli army. AFP
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