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Dozens of Palestinian youths demonstrated Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah near the borders with Egypt to show support for Iraq and to condemn US threats to attack Iraq.
The demonstrators marched Rafah town streets, waving Palestinian and Iraqi flags and chanting slogans which called upon Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to strike on Tel Aviv.
The demonstrators burned the flags of the United States amid shouting "Allaho Akbar (God is great), while masked Palestinian militants wearing black uniforms fired gunshots in the air.
The Rafah refugee camp and the town are a flashpoint of confrontations with Israel in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Israel says that militants are smuggling weapons through tunnels on the borders between the town and Egypt.
"To Iraq, we are marching, and sacrifice millions of martyrs," the young men chanted together with children.
One of the demonstrators that who is a member of Arafat's Fatah movement which organized the rally told reporters that the Palestinians and the Iraqis are sharing the same present and the same future.
The demonstrators blasted the United States for demanding to oust both Saddam Hussein and Arafat. One of the masked young men said that the Palestinians would reject ousting both leaders that they like very much.
(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2002)
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