Hundreds of Somali demonstrators protested after Friday prayers in Mogadishu and a number of other towns in the war-torn Somalia against the Israeli raids on Gaza Strip in the Middle East.

People chanted slogans against the Israeli bombing in Gaza calling for an immediate halt to the bombing which they say cause the death of innocent children, women and the elderly.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the main Sheik Ali Sufi Mosque in Mogadishu, as religious leaders spoke about "the suffering of the Palestinian people," saying the current situation n Somalia will never bar them from expressing their anger at what is happing in Gaza and sharing the pain with the people of Palestine.

Sheik Ibrahim Suley, one of the most prominent Islamic scholar sin Mogadishu, spoke with the protesters outside the main mosque.

"We are against the killing of innocent people and we share the pain and suffering with the people of Gaza, because as Muslims we are as one body -- if one part feels pains the whole body feels the pain," Suley told the protesters who burned the Israeli flag.

In Beledweyne, the provincial capital of Hiran in central Somalia, people also took to the streets and condemned the attack son Gaza calling the international community to intervene.

Abdirahman Ibrahim Maow, senior local official in Beledweyne, spoke with the protestors and urged "the people of Gaza be saved."

In Jawhar, hundreds of people gathered in the local stadium and chanted anti-Israeli slogans and called for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the Middle East.

Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza were killed while nearly three thousand others were wounded including women and children in raids by Israeli fighter planes for nearly two weeks.

Israel says it wants to stop fighters of Hamas from firing rockets into settlement posts close to the Gaza strip.

(Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2009)