Beirut  - Outrage against Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip led to violent demonstrations and political denunciations in Lebanon on Sunday.

Lebanese anti-riot police used force to disperse a demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy in Beirut, firing tear gas and using water after protesters got close to a barbed wire barricade and started throwing stones at police officers.

The protesters, who numbered in the hundreds, were mostly from the Sunni groupings in Lebanon and Hamas.

Before the confrontation, men riding motorbikes and carrying black flags, wearing the traditional Palestinian headdress had chanted "God help our people in Gaza," were among the protesters.

One of the protesters told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, "We are here to show our solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza and ask the world community to intervene to stop the bloodshed."

Also Sunday, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah said the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip was a "war crime and a genocide that requires immediate action from the international community and its institutions."

Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the denunciation by the Arab League and Arab countries "is no longer enough to cover the UN's shameful political stance, because allowing the siege of the Palestinian people to continue is tantamount to participation in it."

The UN Security Council early Sunday called for an immediate end to all military actions in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, thousands of people demonstrated near the UN headquarters in Beirut, southern Lebanon's market town of Nabatieh, and the Palestinian refugee camp in the Bekaa valley, to protest the Israeli attacks.

Angry demonstrators called on Egypt to open the Rafah crossing and voiced anger towards Arab silence over the "massacres in Gaza."

Hezbollah called on the Muslim world to "stand against Israeli barbarism to stop the ongoing massacre."

The Arab countries should "instead support (the Palestinian) people on all military and civil levels to make it more capable of facing this aggression."

Hezbollah called on Arab countries to "take a firm stand and exert its utmost efforts against the Israeli barbarism - which is covered by the US - and the international community to stop this ongoing massacre."

Israel and Hezbollah engaged in 33 days of war in July-August 2006 after the Hezbollah fighters carried out rocket attacks and captured two soldiers in a cross-border raid from Lebanon. dpa