Security forces fired automatic rifles into the air to stop tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators chanting "Death to America!" from storming the US embassy in Yemen, as outrage over attacks on Iraq spilled into the streets around the Middle East for a second day on Friday.

Scores of soldiers were called in to help contain the protest, the most violent the Yemeni capital has seen since price-hike riots six years ago. Riot police clashed with smaller but equally angry crowds in Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain.

An estimated 30 000 protesters assembled after Friday prayers in central Sanaa and marched several kilometres toward the US embassy, which was closed. Hundreds of police ringing the compound tried to stop the crowd, using teargas and water cannons before resorting to bursts of automatic rifle fire into the air.

Protesters kept up their push, picking up stones and teargas canisters and hurling them at police lines. Crowds shouted "No American and no British embassy on Yemeni land" and "Death to America, Death to Israel".

'Death to America, Death to Israel'

At least three demonstrators fainted, apparently overcome by teargas. One policeman, bleeding from the head, was taken away in a police car.

In the Egyptian capital Cairo, about 10 000 chanted anti-US slogans to protest against the war as they gathered under tight security after Friday's weekly prayers.

"Islam is being raped. I feel terrible," said Um-Mohammed, an Egyptian woman who took part in the demonstrations outside the venerable Al-Azhar mosque. Hundreds of protesters threw stones and other objects at police, who responded with water cannons and by hitting people with sticks. At least two protesters were arrested and two were taken away by an ambulance.

In his sermon, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar and the Muslim world's top Sunni cleric, called for jihad, or holy war, to support the Iraqi people but avoided any reference to the US or the Iraqi regime. "Islam supports defending the righteous path, and we have to support and defend the people of Iraq."

Riot police in Bahrain used teargas and truncheons to hold off about a thousand stone-throwing protesters marching on the US Embassy there. Similar scenes were reported in Jordan.

'Islam is being raped. I feel terrible'

About 500 Palestinians marched through the al-Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus, Syria, with posters of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat. They condemned Arab leaders who have aided the US war effort and chanted "Oh, Saddam! Destroy Kuwait. Destroy Kuwait's prince".

Iranian leaders slammed the US-led war against Iraq as "Satanic" and a "threat to humanity". - Sapa-AP