CAIRO, 23 March 2003 — Anti-war protesters were out in force on the streets of cities across the Arab world again yesterday to vent their anger at the US-led assault on Iraq as Baghdad came under further bombardment by American and British forces.
More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Egypt, where students from Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic university burned American, British and Israeli flags and called for President Hosni Mubarak to send military support to Iraq.
Some 5,000 students marched in the northern port of Alexandria, 3,000 at Ain Shams, northeast of the capital, and in Suez, an estimated 2,000 at Helwan, southeast of Cairo, and a further 1,000 at the Cairo Faculty of Medicine. In addition, 1,000 or so lawyers organized a sit-in at the headquarters of their legal association in the center of Cairo.
In Gaza City, nearly 10,000 people demonstrated, mostly students from the local Islamic University, carrying Hamas banners as a gesture of support for the main Palestinian Islamic movement, and Iraqi flags, while chanting their opposition to the US, Britain and their Arab allies.
In northern Lebanon, in the Palestinian refugee camps of Bared and Baddaoui, thousands of Palestinian schoolchildren demonstrated and called for a boycott of American goods. Around 1,000 Syrian and Palestinian students from the Faculty of Letters at Damascus University took to the streets of the Syrian capital, chanting: “We will sacrifice ourselves for you, Baghdad.” The march was turned away by police from the area where many embassies are located.
