BAGHDAD (AFP) - Thousands of Palestinians in occupied Iraq (news - web sites) vowed to avenge Israel's killing of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, saying the battle against the "enemy" was now in a decisive phase.
Joined by members of Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslim parties, the Palestinian refugees living in Iraq marched in eastern Baghdad venting their rage against Israel and "treacherous" Arab regimes.
"Sheikh Yassin have no fear, we will redeem you with our blood," pledged the men, women and children who emerged from Al-Qods (Jerusalem) Mosque and marched to the headquarters of the PLO-affiliated National Palestine Movement in Iraq.
They denounced the United States and Israel as "enemies of God", and slammed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who ordered the air attack which killed Yassin as a "butcher" whose crime would not go unpunished.
"I expect huge intifadas (uprisings) to break out in Palestine, across Israel and in the Arab countries. The fires will reduce the enemy to ashes," Hajj Hamza al-Juburi of the Hawza, Iraq's Shiite religious authority, told AFP.
Sheikh Saad al-Juburi of the Iraqi Association of Sunni Ulemas accused Sharon of having killed off the Middle East peace process and said Yassin's assassination would have "very bad repercussions for our region".
The clerics locked arms with leaders of the 30,000-strong Palestinian community which decreed three days of mourning for Yassin, a paraplegic cleric whose killing by Israel was seen here as a wake-up call for Arab leaders.
"Our Arab regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, all of them are rotten to the core because they are bowing to American pressure," said 71-year-old Rafic Fares, a refugee from Haifa.
Anaam Khaled, whose family like many Palestinian refugees in Iraq was uprooted from Haifa after Israel's creation in 1948, said Sharon's "criminal aggression will not stop us from doing our duties to recover Palestine."
Another mourner in the cortege that was preceded by armed men from the Hawza who fired a few rounds into the air when a mock coffin draped in the Palestinian flag was produced, said Yassin's death was a painful day.
"The Jews are criminals who robbed us of our rights and now they killed Sheikh Yassin. They say we are terrorists when all along they are the God of terror," said Hassan Othman.
Palestinian community leaders told AFP the death of Yassin was a "tragedy" and a turning-point in the struggle to recover Palestinian statehood.
"We are not members of Hamas. We belong to the Palestine Liberation Organisation. But this abject murder will strengthen our resolve and ranks against Israel," said their leader Qusay al-Madi.
"This is not Hamas' battle alone. It is a decisive battle because the enemy (Israel) has overstepped the limits," said Anwar al-Sheikh, a member of the Palestinian National Movement in Iraq.
"The retaliation will be thunderous. Even the trees in the Zionist entity will be uprooted," he said, although he did not expect any violence to occur in Iraq.
Rassmiya Abdel Sayyed, who lives in a UN-supplied tent at the sports compound where Palestinians began receiving condolences for Yassin, said Arab leaders were to blame for failing to stand steadfastly with the Palestinians.
"The Arab leaders pretend to be helping us but they are only interested in keeping their seats" of power, she said.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been dislodged from their homes since the US-led war in Iraq launched a year ago and 40 families still live in desperate conditions at the Haifa Club Palestinian sporting club.
For Wissam Abu Ibrahim, a Hamas member deported by Israel from Gaza for taking part in anti-Israeli activities, the time has come to return to the field of battle.
Sharon "has opened wide the door to war. We will fight Israel inside and outside its borders," said the 39-year-old, whose wife and six children still live in Gaza.
By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The largely dormant Lebanese-Israeli front erupted in fighting Monday, with Hezbollah guerrillas shelling Israeli positions in a disputed area and Israel retaliating with airstrikes.
The escalation, the first since January, came amid outrage in the Arab world after Israeli missiles killed Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Islamic militant group Hamas, earlier Monday.
Lebanese officials said Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets and mortar shells at Israeli military outposts inside the disputed Chebaa Farms area near the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel.
Hezbollah's Al Manar television reported that Hezbollah fighters attacked "the Zionist occupation positions in the occupied Lebanese Chebaa Farms."
In a statement to The Associated Press, Hezbollah linked the attack to Yassin's assassination, saying it attacked "all Zionist enemy positions in the Chebaa Farms, using direct weapons and rockets and scoring direct hits."
It said the targeted positions were Roueissat el-Alam, al-Samaka, Zibeddin, Roueissat al-Karn, al-Radar and Ramtha.
The Israeli army said its fighter jets were responding and troops also used artillery fire against suspected guerrilla hideouts near the Chebaa Farms. The army said Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles.
Lebanese officials said Israeli warplanes fired two missiles into valleys and mountainous areas near the villages of Kfar Chouba and Hilta, they said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Monday's was the first attack on the Chebaa Farms in five months.
On Oct. 27, 2003, Hezbollah guerrillas shelled Israeli positions in the Chebaa Farms, wounding an Israeli soldier and triggering Israeli airstrikes.
In the most recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli warplanes struck Hezbollah guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon after an Israeli soldier was killed and another wounded when Hezbollah guerrillas fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli military bulldozer that crossed into Lebanon.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which led a guerrilla war against Israel's 18-year occupation of a border zone in southern Lebanon that ended in 2000, occasionally attacks Israeli troops in the Chebaa Farms.
The Chebaa Farms is uninhabited farmland on the foothills of Mount Hermon that Lebanon, backed by Syria, claims as its own. Israel captured the territory when its forces seized Syria's Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war. The United Nations says the region is Syrian and that Syria and Israel should negotiate its fate.
Israel and the United States regard Hezbollah as a terrorist group, but Lebanon regards it as a legitimate resistance movement against Israeli occupation of Arab lands.