BEIRUT: Lebanese police have used water hoses to disperse protesters rallying against Israel's Gaza ground offensive near the US Embassy, north of Beirut.

More than 500 university students hurled sticks at police yesterday and tried to break through the barbed wire fence outside the heavily-fortified embassy.

In Syria, more than 5,000 people held another anti-Israel demonstration in Damascus.

The protesters burned effigies of the US president and Israeli foreign minister and called on Hizbollah to fire rockets on Israel.

Separately, 100 Palestinian supporters called for the European Union to take action against Israel's military attack in Gaza, as EU envoys visited the Middle East to try to help end the onslaught.

"Europe where are you?, you are watching while blood is spilt," the demonstrators chanted at the main headquarters of the 27 EU member nations, the European Council building in Brussels.

Despite snow and biting cold, the supporters gathered with Palestinian flags and behind a large banner reading "Massacre in Gaza", with photographs of people hurt or killed in the offensive.

In Egypt, an EU mission seeking to broker an end to the violence held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ahead of a similar visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Meanwhile, Looters ransacked a Paris watchmakers and grabbed more than a quarter of a million dollars worth of stock in the wake of a protest against Israel's Gaza offensive.

"Forty vandals came in in three successive waves at three-minute intervals," a manager of the Louis Pion boutique in central Paris' Opera district said.