Hamas militant threatens Americans at pro-Iraq rally

Muslims and Arabs will attack American targets everywhere if the United States goes to war against Iraq, a senior member of the militant Islamic movement Hamas said in Gaza yesterday.

He made the new threat during a march by 3,000 Palestinians through the winding streets of Gaza City on the 12th anniversary of the 1991 Gulf War. Some protesters fired shots shot in the air and others held portraits of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"If Iraq is attacked... all American targets will be open targets for every Muslim, Arab or Palestinian," Mahmoud al-Zahar, told reporters.

"Any attack against Iraq will be answered by resistance everywhere and American interests everywhere will be targeted. We say that all American targets will be open targets to every Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian," he said.

Hamas, responsible for a wave of suicide bombings in the 27-month-old Palestinian uprising, has said previously that its strategy is to carry out attacks only against Israelis in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel.

Islamic groups and secular factions at the march issued their own statement which condemned Arab states who were "silent against the assaults on Iraq and Palestine".

Protesters chanted slogans against US President George W. Bush, whose father was president during the 1991 war in which Iraqi troops were driven out of Kuwait.

"Bush junior is a coward. Iraq will not be humiliated," they chanted under Palestinian and Iraqi flags.

Palestinians have regularly held rallies and marches in support of Saddam in recent weeks.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat supported Saddam during the 1991 war but has been more cautious this time, calling for a peaceful resolution of its standoff with the United States which has called on Iraq to disarm.

Iraq has paid millions of dollars to families of Palestinians killed during the uprising for an independent state which began in September 2000.