Anti-Israel protest targets US consulate in Pakistan

Tens of thousands rally across globe

About 2,000 people took part in a protest rally in Karachi, Pakistan, yesterday against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip. Several hundred then marched on the US Consulate. (ATHAR HUSSAIN/REUTERS)

KARACHI, Pakistan - Security forces used tear gas and batons to repel anti-Israel protesters who tried to attack a US consulate in Pakistan yesterday, as tens of thousands in cities across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia demonstrated against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.

A protest in Brussels that drew 30,000 turned violent as well, with demonstrators overturning cars and smashing shop windows. And in Manila, police used shields to disperse students protesting outside the US Embassy.

About 2,000 protesters in the Pakistani port city of Karachi burned US flags and chanted anti-Israel slogans, and several hundred of them marched on the US Consulate, senior police official Ameer Sheikh said. "They were in a mood to attack," he said. "They were carrying bricks, stones, and clubs."

A US Embassy spokesman in Islamabad, Lou Fintor, said the protesters did not get close to the consulate, which was closed yesterday.

Washington provides a large amount of foreign aid to Israel as well as military and weapons assistance. Israeli military action is often perceived in the Muslim world as being financed and supported by the United States. While Pakistan's government is a US ally, anti-American sentiment is pervasive in the Muslim majority country.

In Spain, as many as 100,000 people attended rallies in Madrid and the southwestern city of Seville, urging Israel to "Stop the massacre in Gaza" and calling for peace initiatives. Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, will tour the Middle East starting today to promote solutions to the conflict.

An estimated 2,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, meanwhile, protested peacefully in downtown Beirut, waving Palestinian flags and calling on the international community to intervene in the Israeli attack.

Fifteen ambulances from an Islamic medical society sounded their sirens for 20 seconds in solidarity with Gaza medics. Leftist participants set fire to a large Israeli flag, while children taking part in the protest held bloody dolls representing Palestinian children killed in Gaza.

The death of children in the Gaza assault has become an enduring theme at protests.

Children carrying effigies of bloody babies headed the march attended by thousands in Brussels, which later turned violent before police intervened with water cannons and arrested 10 protesters. Belgian lawmaker Richard Miller told Le Soir newspaper that he was hit in the face by a stone thrown by a demonstrator.

In New York, thousands of supporters of Israel rallied near the United Nations, declaring the offensive an act of self-defense.

"For the last three and a half years, Israel's been bombarded daily by a number of rockets coming from Gaza," said Governor David Paterson, one of a dozen elected officials who addressed the crowd that filled a block of 42nd Street.

"The founding charter of Hamas calls for the obliteration of the state of Israel," he said.

Across town at Times Square, about 150 pro-Palestinian demonstrators waved signs with pictures of dead and wounded children.