CAIRO, 27 March 2004 — Thousands of Muslims across the Middle East yesterday demanded revenge against Israel for assassinating Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and denounced America for backing the Jewish state.
At Friday prayers from Iran to Bahrain, protesters carried Palestinian flags to commemorate Yassin — who was killed Monday in an Israeli missile attack — and shouted angry slogans against “the Zionist enemy.”
Some 25,000 people crammed into downtown Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, where its preacher asked God to “make Islam victorious” and “strike down the Jews.” Teens wore green bandanas bearing messages that read “All of us are Yassin” in Arabic and English.
Banners hung around the mosque praising Yassin and promising to seek revenge for his death. Leaflets bearing the slain cleric’s picture were handed out, with some reading, “We are not afraid of death, for it is life.”
Following the somber prayer, thousands of men and women spilled out of the mosque, shouting “we will fight” and “a salute to jihad, either victory or martyrdom!” Large numbers of police and soldiers surrounded the area and closed off roads leading to the mosque.
In Iran, thousands of demonstrators marched in major cities across the country, some yelling, “Sheikh Yassin’s blood will be the fuel for the liberation of Palestine.”
In the capital Tehran’s downtown district, thousands shouted, “Israel and America are the enemies of Allah” while waving Palestinian and Iranian flags, raising posters of Yassin and holding banners with messages of condolence.
Around 2,500 Palestinians from the Al-Jalil refugee camp in Baalbek, eastern Lebanon, marched after Friday prayers, carrying a portrait of Yassin and a model of his wheelchair and chanted slogans denouncing his killing and “Arab silence” toward Israeli crimes.
Outside the US Embassy in Bahrain, riot police fired tear gas at about 400 stone-throwing protesters who were shouting, “down, down USA!” and “our blood and our souls are with you, oh martyr” in reference to Yassin.
In Jordan, police provided tight security around mosques where worshipers held special prayers for Yassin.
In the capital, Amman, more than 500 street protesters chanted, “With our blood we sacrifice our lives for you Sheikh Yassin.”
Police cordoned mosques in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, preventing worshipers from staging demonstrations following Friday prayers. But in their sermons, clerics accused America of collaborating with Israel in Yassin’s assassination. “The United States is the main ally and the powerful supporter for Israel and it is the one who gave the green light to kill Yassin,” one cleric said.
