Thousands of Egyptian university students staged campus protests against Israeli raids on Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip and Syria, official sources said. A rally at Ain Shams University in northern Cairo was peaceful, ending with an appeal to Arab heads of state to respond to the latest Israeli attacks. It was followed by a meeting of around 4,500 students who shouted slogans calling for "reviving the jihad [holy war] to eradicate the Zionist entity," an organizer said. The group also warned against "the presence of enemy forces at the doors of Egypt," in the border town of Rafah where the Israeli army had staged two raids since last Friday. The Israeli army targeted what it said were tunnels in Rafah, which straddles the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

Police estimated that some 2,000 to 3,000 students took part in the demonstration. They also expressed solidarity with Syria, which was hit by an Israeli air raid on the night of October 4, saying, "tomorrow it will be our turn" to be attacked in Egypt.

Under emergency laws in force since 1981, public protests are banned, but they are tolerated on university campuses and in mosques.

Egyptian filmmakers urged organizers of the Cairo International Film Festival to withdraw the sole Egyptian film from the official competition because its director backs normalization of ties with Israel. Dozens of filmmakers and critics met to demand the withdrawal of "Girls' Loves" because its director Khaled Al Hagar had made a previous film backing normalization with the Jewish state.

They criticized the 1993 film, "A Barrier That Divides Us," which tells the story of an impossible love between an Egyptian man and a young Jewish woman in London. The film was sharply criticized when it was shown during the meeting at the offices of the Bar Association.

Hagar's film was the only Egyptian entry among the 19 films in the official competition, though a total of 210 films from 45 different countries will be shown throughout the 10-day festival that began last week. But Hagar last week condemned what he said was "Israel's oppressive practices against the Palestinian people." His new film is about three half-sisters who do not know each other. They meet upon the death of their father, whose will requires them to live together for a year before they can inherit his property.