Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched through the streets of Rabat yesterday in the largest Arab demonstration against the Anglo-American air strikes against Iraq, writes Michael Jansen.
On Saturday protesters confronted local security forces in many parts of the Arab world. In Damascus 1,000 demonstrators attacked the US embassy, some of them breaking into the building and the ambassador's residence. Offices of the American Cultural Centre, the British embassy and the British Council also were ransacked.
Hundreds of students gathered outside the US embassy at Awkar, near the Lebanese capital, while a crowd of 1,000 gathered in front of UN headquarters in central Beirut chanting anti-US slogans and comparing the onslaught on Iraq to Israel's massacre of 100 Lebanese civilians at the UN base at Qana during the 1996 "Grapes of Wrath" bombardments of southern Lebanon.
In the West Bank more than 100 Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli police, five seriously, raising the toll to one fatality and several hundred injured in four days of demonstrations.