MAKKAH, 1 August 2006 — The Muslim World League condemned Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon saying it has indiscriminatingly killed, maimed and wounded civilians, including women and children, in a statement yesterday. The MWL secretariat specifically decried Sunday’s Qana massacre in which at least 60 civilians were killed.
“The MWL, which is closely following the developments in Lebanon, demands on behalf of the Muslim states and organizations the world over the immediate stop of Israel’s war in Lebanon’s territory, which has turned the land into an inferno and a vast killing field,” said MWL Secretary-General Abdullah Al-Turki said in his statement in Makkah yesterday.
“Markets and residential districts have been have been bombed. Israel continued its savage attacks, discarding international demand for a ceasefire and consideration for the relief work for the afflicted people.” Turki asked the Islamic governments and their people to offer immediate assistance such as food and medicine to the Lebanese people. Turki also commended the efforts of the Kingdom to bring immediate assistance of $1.5 billion apart from organizing countrywide donation campaign.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Arab capitals yesterday, some burning Israeli flags, others carrying tiny coffins and seeking revenge for children killed in an air raid on the Lebanese village of Qana. In Amman, around 1,000 students rallied at the University of Jordan, torching the Israeli flag in protest against Sunday’s carnage.
The protesters, who were called out by the Islamist students’ union, clashed with university guards when they tried to unlock campus gates to take their march to the streets but were pushed back. The deaths in Qana have further enraged a region boiling after Israel’s repeated strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza and then Lebanon.
The Qana attack was the deadliest since Israel launched its offensive against Lebanon 20 days ago, and was a chilling repeat of another strike on the same village 10 years ago. Israel is trying to crush Hezbollah after it launched a deadly raid and captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 and then continued to pound Israeli communities with rockets. The protesters chanted words of praise and encouragement in Hezbollah’s fight against Israel which they described as the “nation of black hatred.”
In Syria, hundreds of women protested in Damascus, some carrying tiny coffins symbolizing the dead children. They also vented their anger at the United States, a staunch Israeli ally.
“Bush, you coward,” and “down with the United States,” chanted the crowds, most of them clad in black, referring to US President George W. Bush. Syrian President Bashar Assad had branded the attack on Qana as “state terrorism.”
In Cairo, a group of around 100 protesters had gathered outside the journalist’s union Sunday evening, shouting slogans against Israel and holding aloft news pictures of children killed or wounded in the raid.
In a separate demonstration, a group of around 120 members of Parliament marched to the Arab League headquarters to campaign for the recall of the Israeli and US ambassadors in Cairo. Some of them were carrying banners voicing their support for Hezbollah while others chanted slogans urging it to strike Tel Aviv.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is one of Israel’s few Muslim friends, condemned the killing of civilians in Lebanon as “a new culture of violence” that would fuel more hatred and terrorism in the region. “There can never be a justification for a mentality which massacres innocent people, destroys cities and justifies violence,” Erdogan said in a monthly address to the nation.
Iran stepped up verbal attacks on Israel, declaring after the deadly raid on Qana that Israeli officials would suffer a fate worse than that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Iranian state television quoted Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar saying that a “fate worse than those of Hitler and Saddam awaits Zionist criminals and their supporters.” Egypt demanded an international investigation into the massacre.
—Additional input from agencies
