Hundreds of people took part in a protest on Muharraq island, the northernmost island in the Bahrain archipelago, in support of Hezbollah and Hamas yesterday.

The protest, which was the largest of its kind in years on the mainly Sunni island, was the first there to come out in support of Hezbollah, despite numerous earlier protests in Shia villages and the capital, Manama.

Over the past few months, the island, which is linked to Manama through a series of bridges, had seen protests condemning the US and Israel for the ongoing war in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Shia and Sunni scholars joined political opposition figures in a crowd chanting "Death to America, Death to Israel."

The protesters carried pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the late founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and former Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser. Some protestrs trampled Israeli flags.

The strong participation of Sunni scholars was meant to send a message of unity among Muslims and a rejection of remarks by some Saudi scholars that the Shia Hezbollah is un-Islamic.

Anger continues to mount in the Arab world as the death toll of the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza continues to rise, placing pressure on Arab regimes who directly or indirectly supported the war and serving as a unifying point for Arab opposition groups.

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Manama. (Archive)