Beirut  - The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah called late Saturday on Hamas to "defeat Israel and kill as many Israeli soldiers as they can."

"Hamas will defeat Israel in ground attack," Hezbollah chief told his followers in Beirut's southern suburbs during the Shiite religious ceremony of Ashoura.

Nasrallah urged Hamas to inflict heavy losses on the Israeli soldiers who launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip after eight days of attacks by air and sea on the region.

"It is by inflicting the biggest possible losses on the Israeli enemy during the ground confrontation that (Hamas) will win the battle," Nasrallah told an Ashoura gathering.

Beirut  - Thousands of protesters from various Palestinian and Lebanese groups demonstrated Friday in front the Egyptian Embassy in the capital Beirut to protest what they described as "the Arab stand" towards the Gaza attack.

"Where are the Arabs? What is this silence?", read one of the placards carried by the protesters.

The crowd carried coffins wrapped in black and Palestinian flags while they moved through the streets from the United Nations headquarters towards the Egyptian embassy.

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

Beirut  - A Lebanese parliamentary leader on Thursday accused Israel of trying to end "resistance" in the Gaza Strip and urged Arab states to cut diplomatic ties to Israel.

Speaking before a meeting of the Arab Parliamentarian Council, Shiite House Speaker Nabih Berri called for assistance to help Palestinians facing an Israeli onslaught.

Beirut  - Lebanon observed a national day of mourning Wednesday to protest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, as a high- state of alert at the Lebanese-Israeli border was registered.

Most government institutions were closed, but private businesses remained opened.

Flags flew at half mast on most government buildings in Beirut in a show of solidarity with the Gaza victims.

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.

Beirut  - Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has called for Lebanon and its sovereignty to be respected and not turned in into a platform for launching rockets into neighbouring Israel, radio reports said on Sunday.

Suleiman made his remarks in a surprise visit to southern Lebanon on Saturday, a day after the army dismantled eight Katyusha rockets set to be fired into northern Israel.

He stressed that this can no longer be tolerated following the deployment of the Lebanese armed forces and United Nations International Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that are working on implementing UN Resolution 1701 which ended 33-days of war between Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement and Israel in August 2006.