Anger against the invasion of Iraq erupted in protests across the Middle East after Islamic prayers on Friday, with crowds provoking the police to fire shots in the air in Iran and tear gas in Jordan.

Canadian Press

AMMAN — Clad head to toe in a traditional black chador, an old woman began to wail as the faithful spilled out of the Husseini Mosque onto the Jordanian capital's narrow downtown streets. "Victory to Saddam!" she chanted. "Saddam is courageous! Bush will fall!"

She is one of the 400,000 Iraqis who fled to Jordan over the past decade. Before long, her call was taken up by a crowd prepared to break Jordanian law and march down the street.

This was just one of dozens of anti-war demonstrations across Jordan on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer that has also become a regional day of protest.

About 3,000 protesters were stopped by riot police who prevented them from reaching the Israeli Embassy In Amman.
Another demonstration was reported in the southern Jordan city of Maan.

Anger against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq erupted in other protests across the Middle East.

In Tehran, hundreds of thousands of Iranians demonstrated, pelting the British Embassy with stones, breaking windows and shouting for it to be closed. The police fired into the air to disperse the crowd, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

In Cairo, Egypt, more than 15,000 protesters marched from Al-Azhar mosque through the medieval part of the city, chanting "with our soul and blood, we redeem you Baghdad." Many demonstrators waved copies of the Qur'an, the Islamic holy book, and some held banners that read "Open the doors for Jihad," or holy war.

"The Iraqi people are fighting to defend themselves, to protect their children. To protect their oil fields," shouted one protester in Amman to the applause of others within earshot.

The middle-aged man, like many of the almost 3,000 demonstrators, refused to give his name to reporters. "I am just an Arab," he said. "I share their religion. The Iraqis are our brothers."

Holding up a local Arabic newspaper, he pointed to a page full of colour photographs from the war zone -- just a day's drive away.

Pictures of an American military helicopter in an Iraqi farmer's field, shots of American tanks firing in the desert, and images not often seen in western media _ graphic close-up photographs of alleged civilian victims, some of them children.

Turning the paper, he jabs his finger at a front-page photo of U.S. President George W. Bush.

"While Bush is pushing his troops to occupy all Iraqi territory, we will fight him here. We will fight him in Palestine a in every place in the Arab countries."

Since the U.S.-led war on Iraq began last week, this kind of pan-Arabic sentiment has echoed through Amman's coffee houses and residential homes, cab rides and hotel lobbies.

The non-stop barrage of war news coverage, led by satellite channels like Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, have given the so-called Arab street a newly confident and louder voice.

In the Arab media, Americans are invaders, not liberators.

The Pentagon's portrayal of a precise, carefully planned conflict is buried by breathless accounts of the carnage at the front. And as the war drags on, those messages -- anti-American as much as anti-war -- are showing up on Jordan's streets in almost daily demonstrations.

Last weekend, the Jordanian government reported 55 anti-war protests throughout the country, including violent clashes in the city of Maan, and in the Palestinian Al-Wihdat refugee camp. Putting the best face on it, Prime Minister Ali Abdul Ragheb said the demonstrations showed "that Jordan is a democratic country."

But the Friday afternoon march was held without the required government permission.

So there was little surprise Jordanian police, clad in riot gear and carrying Plexiglas shields, charged down the street and turned the growing crowd's chants into screams. Shopkeepers dropped security shutters as people scattered down side streets. One officer, wielding what appeared to be a thick sawed-off wood table leg, lunged at a group just metres away.

A little more than an hour after taking to the streets, the crowd dispersed.

As shopkeepers swept up broken glass, Mahir Massouwa, 42, offered a compromise view.

"I know the American people," said Massouwa, who lived in New York City for 16 years. "They don't like to kill people. But the governments, George Bush and Saddam Hussein a both kill people. I blame both."

Massouwa believes the bloodshed is just beginning. "It should last one day. It should end today, because I don't like to see kids killed," he said.

But he added with resignation: "It will last for years, because after Iraq it is Jordan and Turkey. It is Syria. It is Iran."