For the second day in a row, thousands of demonstrators also protested in the other main West Bank cities of Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin and Ramallah. Sporadic clashes with Israeli troops were reported. In Gaza City, police clashed with several hundred demonstrators attempting to march on the Palestine Legislative Council to express their support for Iraq. Police used tear gas and truncheons to disperse the crowd.

In Cairo, an estimated 5,000 Muslim worshippers called for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States as they emerged from Friday prayers at the prestigious Al-Azhar mosque. Al-Azhar Chief SheikhMohammad Seyyed Tantawi, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, urged God ``to ensure the victory of the Iraqi people against the unjust,'' in a reference to the US and Britain.``With our blood and souls we will redeem you, Oh Islam'' and ``Death to the enemies of God,'' the worshippers chanted repeatedly as they emerged from the mosque. They also brandished placards reading ``Must the Iraqi People Die for Monica?'' in a reference to the former White House intern whose affair with President Bill Clinton could lose him the presidency.

Lebanon also saw a day of protests against the strikes. In Beirut, 1,000 left-wing and Islamist students joined members of parliament in a demonstration outside UN headquarters. They waved photographs of Iraqi civilian casualties and shouted ``Iraq dear, hit, hit Tel Aviv,'' the same slogan used by Palestinian demonstrators.

The Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim Hezbollah, which spearheads the attacks against Israeli forces in South Lebanon, organised a protest in the southerncity of Nabitiyeh in ``support of the Iraqi people confronted by the savage US aggression''. And the leader of the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Jamaa Islamiya, Sheikh Maher Hammud, said ``the United States could eliminate Saddam Hussein, but they keep him in place to have an excuse to destroy the Arab and Islamic nation''.

After prayers at Amman's University of Jordan mosque, members of the Opposition Muslim Brotherhood made a series of pro-Iraq speeches. Dozens of riot police watched as a crowd of a few hundred later demonstrated outside the mosque against the Iraq strikes. ``With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Iraq,'' chanted demonstrators who called on their neighbour not to bow to the US aggression.

In Tehran, several dozen Iranians, most of them Islamic fundamentalists, held a protest against the US-British strikes on neighbouring Iraq. In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, demonstrators left various mosques after prayers and joined a procession towards the Iraqi embassy wherethey delivered a message of solidarity. ``Down with Anglo-Saxon aggression, victory to Iraq,''

protestors shouted, some brandishing portraits of President Saddam Hussein. "Down, down USA, death to Israel, shame on Clinton, Mohammad's Army will return," they chanted.