By Suleiman al-Khalidi AMMAN, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Jordan deployed riot police to disperse protesters planning to march on the Israeli embassy in Amman on Friday, and tens of thousands rallied across the nation and in Egypt to protest against Israel's offensive in Gaza. Demonstrators near the embassy in Amman's Rabia district hurled stones at the police, who were backed by armoured personnel carriers firing teargas, and chanted slogans demanding Jordan cut its diplomatic ties with Israel. "Expel the ambassador. No Zionist embassy on Jordanian land," they chanted. Protesters also demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in Egypt, which also has diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Some 1,500 demonstrators outside the Rafae mosque in the Egyptian coastal city of El Arish threw stones at police, injuring three, witnesses said. Thousands took to the streets in other Egyptian cities after Friday prayers, demanding Egypt open its border with Gaza to help supply food and medicine. Police broke up most of the protests. At least 5,000 demonstrators in downtown Alexandria, on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, waved Palestinian flags and shouted slogans against Israel and in support of Hamas, the Islamic movement that controls Gaza. "We are very angry about the dead people, the women, and the children," said Hassan Ismail, 40. "We are asking the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing and we are asking that food and supplies as well as weapons be sent to Hamas." Medics in Gaza say the Palestinian death toll has topped 780. Ten soldiers have been killed in Israel's campaign to crush Hamas forces and stop cross-border rocket fire -- which has killed three Israeli civilians since the offensive began. WEST BANK PROTESTS Hundreds of mosques in Jordan held prayers for those killed, and protesters urged a jihad (holy struggle) in marches in Amman and in cities and refugee camps across the kingdom. "O Martyrs, your blood will not go in vain," angry youths carrying a large Palestinian flag shouted as others burnt U.S. and Israeli flags. Most of Jordan's 5 million citizens are of Palestinian origin, they or their parents having been expelled or fled to Jordan in the fighting that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, governed by Hamas's rival Fatah movement under President Mahmoud Abbas, also protested, but the rallies were short and relatively muted. Israeli forces and Abbas's police were on high alert, although there were only minor clashes around weekly prayers. Around 4,000 people protested in Ramallah. Police fired teargas to disperse Hamas supporters in the crowd who taunted them as "Jews" and "collaborators" of Israel. Several thousand people demonstrated and burned Israeli flags in Hebron, a Hamas stronghold in the West Bank. In Africa, protesters clashed with riot police in the capital of the Saharan Islamic state of Mauritania, the only other Arab state to have diplomatic ties with Israel. Around 5,000 people joined a demonstration in the city before riot police fired teargas to disperse them, and groups of several dozen people retaliated, hurling stones and smashing up police vehicles in the city's sandy streets. A few hundred people also burnt Israeli flags in front of the main mosque in Dakar, capital of neighbouring Senegal. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and has promised to lead a mediation mission to the Middle East. Using Friday prayers to scorn Israel and the United States, hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami said in Tehran Israeli officials "deserve to be hanged 10 times". "Bush now has the blood of more than 800 Palestinian martyrs on his hands," he said. (Additional reporting by Vincent Fertey in Nouakchott, Diadie Ba in Dakar, Will Rasmussen in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in El Arish, Egypt, Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran; editing by Alison Williams)
An Algerian boy shouts anti-Israel slogans during a protest against Israel's offensive in Gaza, in Algiers January 9, 2009. Israel rejected a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on ...
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