Demonstrations were held around the world in reaction to the ongoing Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip which in seven days has left at least 420 Palestinians dead and thousands injured.

In the world's most populous Muslim country Indonesia, more than 10,000 people rallied outside the US embassy in Jakarta on Friday to protest the Gaza Strip attacks and condemn the United States for supporting the Israel.

It was the biggest protest in support of the Palestinians in Indonesia since the airstrikes were launched on Saturday in what Israel says is a defensive move to halt rocket attacks on Israeli territory by Palestinian militants.

PKS chairman Tifatul Sembiring blasted US President George W Bush for refusing to condemn the attacks and urged his successor Barack Obama not follow Bush's footsteps.

Thousands also staged anti-Israeli protests in several other Indonesian cities, local media reported.

In Egypt, thousands of demonstrators took the streets after Friday Islamic prayers while Egyptian police cracked down on the outlawed Islamic group Muslim Brotherhood who have put pressure on the government to do more to help Gaza.

Around 20 senior members of Brotherhood planning a demonstration were arrested in the early hours of Friday.

The Islamic group has seen its popularity grow due to their advocacy in Egypt of opening the Gaza Strip's Rafah crossing to help the Palestinians. Egypt's government has refused to open its border with Gaza except to send aid convoys.

At Cairo's al-Azhar mosque, one of the most important centres of Sunni Islam, hundreds of worshippers demonstrated after the Friday prayers amid tight security, with small clashes breaking out between Egyptian security forces and demonstrators.

In Lebanon, thousands of protesters from various Palestinian and Lebanese groups demonstrated in front the Egyptian embassy in Beirut to protest what they described as Arab "silence" towards the Gaza attack.

The demonstrators also staged a sit-in in front of the UN headquarters in downtown Beirut.

In Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli, angry demonstrators stoned several shops, prompting the army to immediately disperse the protest and arrested at least three protestors.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora on Friday accused Israel of trying to drag Lebanon into the Gaza conflict.

Keeping "Lebanon non-aligned in the Gaza crisis" was necessary, he said, adding that the current situation should be considered a lesson to all Arab countries to build solidarity against Israel.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh ordered a major fundraising campaign for the Palestinians as Israeli airstrikes continued, the official Saba news agency said.

Saleh entrusted a local pro-Palestinian NGO with leading the country-wide campaign, and urged Yemenis to "open-handedly contribute for their Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who are subjected to the barbaric aggression and atrocities by the Zionist occupation forces."

In South Africa, 1,000 people were reported to have protested outside the US consulate in an area of Johannesburg, criticizing the US for arming Israel.

The protesters were addressed by the South African Council of Churches and the country's Congress of Trade Unions, with a representative of the latter calling Israel "an apartheid state."

In Europe, around 6,000 protesters gathered in Vienna to protest Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to police estimates, in a demonstration largely organized by Muslim groups.

Some in the crowd had placards saying: "I have a dream: A world without Israel."

"No one questions the existence of Jews. But states have no natural right to exist," the Austrian daily Der Standard quoted Anas Schakfeh, the President of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria, in its Friday edition.

Meanwhile, a Danish court remanded a Danish-Palestinian man in custody on suspicion of wounding two Israeli citizens in a shooting, police and media said Friday.

The two Israelis did not sustain life-threatening injuries in the shooting which took place Wednesday in a shopping mall in the city of Odense, where they were selling hair products.

Police said they were investigating various motives, but some media reports suggested the attack may have been linked to the violence in Gaza.

Israel's charge d'affaires, Dan Oryan, told Danish public broadcaster DR it was "disturbing" that the two were apparently targeted simply for being Israeli nationals.

Despite the protests, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Friday blamed Palestinian Islamic group Hamas for the violence in Gaza.

Charging Hamas - which rules the Strip - with holding the people of Gaza hostage, Rice warned that a ceasefire, to be acceptable, had to be "durable and sustainable" and one which would not allow Hamas to "continue to launch rockets out of Gaza."

"The Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad for rockets against Israeli cities and has contributed deeply to a very bad daily life for the Palestinian people in Gaza, and to a humanitarian situation that we have all been trying to address," Rice said.

"Frankly, Hamas has made it very difficult for the people of Gaza to have a reasonable life." (dpa)