CAIRO, 11 March 2003 — Thousands of Egyptian university students all over the country held pro-Iraq rallies inside their campuses yesterday. Police ringed the campuses to ensure that the no one would break the country’s ban on street demonstrations.

At Cairo’s Ain Shams University nearly 4,000 students gathered to the cries of “God is Great.” The protesters chanted “Iraqis hold on, the Islamic army is coming,” “Arab leaders, open the doors of Jihad (holy war),” and “Lowly Bush, the blood of Muslims is not so cheap.”

At the northern Menufiya University, about 3,000 protesters gathered with some wearing white shrouds to show their willingness to launch suicide attacks. Some demonstrators burned US, British and Israeli flags and an effigy of US President George W. Bush and called in a statement to Arab leaders to adopt a unified position against the United States.

Another 3,000-strong protest also took place in the southern Asswan University, according to the official MENA news agency. In the past two weeks, pro-Iraq rallies have become almost a daily occurrence in Egypt and the Palestinian territories.

Egypt’s emergency laws, in place since 1967, prohibit street demonstrations and allow them only inside university campuses and mosques. Last Wednesday, the ruling National Democratic Party organized in Cairo the largest anti-war demonstration since the start of the Iraqi crisis, attracting hundreds of thousands of people.

Meanwhile, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces have been mobilized to counter a possible Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, a KDP official said yesterday. “On Saturday and Sunday we gathered all our forces. The fighters who were on leave have returned” to their bases, Ihssan Amedi told AFP. “We are worried about the situation and we are prepared.” But he said that for the moment extra troops had not been brought into the region or reservists called up.

The KDP, which shares control of northern Iraq with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), fears Turkey will exploit a US-led war on Iraq to move into the region, and have been worried by reports already of Turkish troop, vehicle and equipment movements on the Turkish side. Turkey already has several thousand troops in northern Iraq and has said it plans to send in more to keep a check on the Kurdish groups.

Ankara is worried that a war may encourage Iraq’s Kurds to break away completely and set up an independent state, offering a rallying point for Turkey’s own restive Kurdish population just across the border. However KDP chief Massoud Barzani warned Saturday of “serious consequences” if Turkish troops moved in and said he hoped the Kurds would not be “betrayed” by Washington. The Iraqi Kurds fear that Washington may be prepared to allow Turkey more leeway in the region in return for using Turkish bases in the long-threatened attack on Baghdad.

In Baghdad, a leading Iraqi newspaper urged the United Nations yesterday to block Washington’s “bloody and feverish” efforts to win Security Council support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq. The United States has run into fierce diplomatic opposition in its efforts to get the Security Council to give Baghdad a March 17 ultimatum to disarm or face war.

“The logic of justice, equity and law should rule in the Security Council, not the bloody and feverish wishes of the adventurers sitting in Washington,” Babel, owned by President Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, said in a front-page editorial.

Babel called on veto powers France, China and Russia, all critics of the US plan, to block the resolution and appealed for support from the three African members of the council. “The world is looking for the other countries to stand firm before the American pressure, especially the African countries,” Babel said.