CAIRO, February 23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Prayers for peace joined demonstrations against war on Iraq on Sunday, February 23, in a fresh firm “No to war” message, as the U.S. has intensified its efforts to win war skeptics for a military aggression against Iraq.

In Egypt, Some 7,500 students demonstrated against U.S. plans to wage a war on Iraq in the largest anti-war rallies here over the current crisis so far, organizers and police said.

Around 5,000 students demonstrated at their university campus in the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria, shouting slogans against the growing war threats to Baghdad.

Another 2,500 students gathered at Ain Shams University in eastern Cairo, shouting "America, we shall defy you," "Iraq we shall sacrifice ourselves for you," and "Iraqi: resist, resist."

Earlier on Sunday, police prevented 3,000 Egyptian and Arab lawyers from venting their anger at the United States in the streets of the capital, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The lawyers, who were holding a conference, had decided to demonstrate in front of Arab League headquarters in downtown Cairo, but police did not let them leave the conference hall for several hours.

Several of them were pushed back into the conference hall in the eastern suburb of Nasr City, participants said, amid a heavy police presence.

“Arab peoples are enraged by the American threats against Iraq, and they would vent their anger on their rulers in the event of a military aggression against the Arab country,” Sameh Ashour, head of the Egyptian Bar Association, told IslamOnline after the conference.

“The communiqué of the conference would call on Arab governments to join hands and abandon their divisions for the sake of rejecting in one clear voice the looming aggression against Iraq by all means possible,” Ashour added.

Demonstrations come at a time the Egyptian government asked parliament on Sunday to extend by another three years the country's emergency laws, which prohibited demonstrations and public rallies since first enforced in 1967, AFP reported.

In the southern Lebanese town of Tyre, some 5,000 people were led by Muslim and Christian dignitaries in a protest to show support for Iraq and the Palestinians.

The demonstration, organized by the Cultural Forum, which groups left-wing intellectuals and officials, denounced the Arab states for not doing more to prevent war in Iraq.

Nasser Hamdan, a representative of the group, told demonstrators "Arab regimes are responsible for what is happening in the region because they are not helping the Palestinian and Iraqi people."

The demonstrators took a similar line: "Where are the Arab armies, where are the Arab leaders?" they shouted, amid a sea of Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian flags and portraits of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein.

An anti-war rally gathering some 10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese was held in Sidon, another coastal city further north, on Tuesday, February 18.

Some of around 2,000 demonstrators protest against a possible war in Iraq and block the entrance of the U.S. Air Base Rhein/Main in Frankfurt

In Oman, about 300 protestors rallied Sunday in Oman against U.S. plans for a war on Iraq, shouting slogans against the United States and its chief allies Britain and Israel.

The rally in Muscat's main commercial district last some two hours and was peaceful amid tight security, an AFP photographer at the scene reported.

Demonstrations are rare throughout the Gulf Arab states and usually require official sanctioning.

Oman, which straddles the strategic Hormuz Strait controlling access to the Gulf, has called for a peaceful settlement of the Iraqi crisis, saying that a war would only add to the miseries of its people.

"Bush the butcher, America is the mother of imperialism," read one slogan. Others branded Britain, Israel and the United States as dishonoring humanity or called for Washington's disarmament.

The protest was called by Omani writers.

In another protest against the war threats to Iraq, some 25,000 people marched through the center of the Moroccan capital Rabat to protest against U.S. threats to wage war on Iraq, chanting slogans condemning Washington and the "horse-trading" being conducted with the United States by Arab nations and Turkey.

They called Turkish government ministers "fascists" for their expected decision to let tens of thousands of U.S. troops deploy across Turkish territory ahead of a possible war on neighboring Iraq.

A separate demonstration against war in Iraq also went ahead in the town of Mohammedia, drawing around 5,000 protestors.

The protests come after a week in which the Moroccan press lambasted Arab countries for their relatively low turnout in global anti-war demonstrations on February 15.

On Sunday tens of thousands of Moroccans marched through Rabat chanting slogans condemning Washington and the "horse-trading" over Iraq being conducted with the United States by Arab nations and Turkey.

The marchers branded Turkish ministers "fascists" for their expected decision to let tens of thousands of US troops deploy at Turkish bases for a possible invasion of neighboring Iraq.

Protests against war have continued in many countries since millions filled the streets of cities worldwide from Sydney to San Francisco on the weekend of February 15.

In Italy, a staunch supporter of the U.S war threats to Iraq, police moved in Saturday after protesters against a possible war in Iraq attached themselves to railway tracks in the north of the country to block two U.S. military trains carrying troops and equipment.

The trains were blocked by the protesters shortly after they started their journey from a base in nearby Vicenza to the U.S. military base of Camp Darby in the Tuscany region.

The authorities were forced to close Verona's Porta Nuova train station and divert the trains onto other lines after groups of protesters spread themselves along the lines, acting on information leaked by rail unions and using mobile phones and radios to communicate.

Another protest at a station in San Rossore forced the convoy to reverse and take another route to its destination.

An earlier train took 12 hours to reach Camp Darby after encountering repeated protests.

Italy has no military engagements except the several thousand peacekeepers it has sent to Afghanistan, but is indirectly aiding the U.S. troop build-up in the Gulf by allowing the use of its airspace, transport networks, ports and military bases.

World-wide people join hands to send the same “No War” message to Washington

In Greece, hundreds people demonstrated on the sidelines of a meeting of European Union energy ministers in the northern city of Salonika.

"It is the duty of the faithful, whatever their religion may be, to proclaim that they can never be happy opposing one another. The future of humanity can never be ensured by terrorism and the logic of war," the 82-year-old Pope said in prayers read from his apartments above St Peter's Square.

On Saturday, the pope urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally, to make "every effort" to avoid going to war against Iraq.

War, he said, would be a "tragedy ... which according to many people is still avoidable."

In Germany, some 2,000 demonstrators partake in a protest against a possible war in Iraq and block the entrance of the U.S. Air Base Rhein/Main in Frankfurt.

In Nepal, Americans and other Westerners opposed to war in Iraq lighted 50,000 traditional butter lamps Sunday at a famous Buddhist monastery near Kathmandu in an appeal for peace.

Up to 500 Americans, Australians, Britons and Canadians held a silent vigil under the eyes of a Buddha statue at the Baudhanath stupa, a Tibetan Buddhist shrine built more than 2,000 years ago.

"We are concerned, patriotic citizens of our respective countries residing in Nepal, and wish to register our profound misgivings about the course that our home governments have taken with regard to Iraq," said U.S. national Lisa Choegyal.

She said an attack on Iraq "without proof of an imminent threat to any of our countries and without the backing of the UN Security Council would be immoral and dangerously in contravention of international law and the UN Charter."

Kathmandu has seen a number of demonstrations against a U.S.-led war in Iraq, most of them sponsored by left-wing groups.

Also prayers for peace were held in Baghdad on Sunday, with Christians gathered in churches across Baghdad, calling for the Iraq crisis to be resolved without recourse to war.

Worshippers jammed pews in various churches in the capital, including the Chaldean Saint Joseph's church where elderly people lit candles.

There are some 750,000 Christians in Iraq from various denominations, of which the Chaldean Catholic Church of Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz is the largest.

In England, a key U.S. ally in war plans against Iraq, Police arrested 10 people for breaking into a southeastern U.S. air base during a protest Sunday against a feared U.S.-led war on Iraq, a police spokesman said.

Some 450 people took part in the march on RAF Fairford, 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Oxford, of whom "the vast majority were well behaved," said Gloucestershire Constabulary spokesman Steve Partridge.

But a "small minority" was determined to get into the base, with some managing to breach the main gate before they were apprehended and arrested, one for theft, two for criminal damage and seven for aggravated trespass.

RAF Fairford, owned by the Royal Air Force but used by the US Air Force, was a point of departure for B-52 bombers during the 1991 Gulf war and 1999 Kosovo conflict.