In Gaza City, around 3,000 demonstrators attended a rally called by the radical Islamic group Hamas, waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags and portraits of the Iraqi president.

Masked men burned portraits of US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon.

"Iraq and Baghdad will be a graveyard for American and British soldiers," Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin told reporters during the protest.

Yassin denounced the "silence of the Arab world" and also called on the Iraqis to "die as martyrs" in suicide attacks against coalition troops.

On March 29, an Iraqi officer drove a car-bomb into a US checkpoint near the central city of Najaf, killing three US soldiers, and a similar incident late Thursday left five dead including three US soldiers and a pregnant woman.

Another 3,000 demonstrators also showed up in Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip where the Israeli army carried out a brief incursion early Friday which left seven Palestinians injured, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

A similiar demonstration in the West Bank town of Nablus drew some 2,000 protestors after midday prayers.

Rallying in the centre of the town, they poured petrol over a model of a US warplane and set it alight, along with American, British and Israeli flags.

SPACE.WIRE