BEIRUT - Lebanon anti-riot police fired teargas and water cannons at dozens of demonstrators who protested near the US embassy on Sunday against Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip, an AFP photographer said.

The incident occurred when some 100 protesters, mainly partisans of the communist party and other leftists groups, tried to overrun barbed wire blocking access to the embassy compound in Awkar, just north of Beirut. At least two protesters were hurt in the confrontation.

Meanwhile thousands of people demonstrated outside UN headquarters in Beirut against the Israeli ground offensive launched late Saturday on Gaza after eight days of deadly air and sea bombardments.

Protesters carried effigies of US President George W. Bush and acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, both with shoes sticking out of their mouths, as well as flags of the Islamist Hamas which rules Gaza.

Last month an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at Bush during his farewell visit to Baghdad.

Overnight thousands of Palestinians held night vigils and protests in several refugee camps in southern Lebanon, torching Israeli flags and pictures of Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, an AFP correspondent said.