Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated on Friday across West Asia in support of the Palestinians and against Israeli airstrikes pounding Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict erupting as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion in the coastal strip.

From Amman, Jordan, to Yemen’s capital of Sanaa, Muslims poured out onto the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by the Israeli strikes in a war that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel last Saturday.

At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israeli police had been permitting only older men, women and children to enter the sprawling hill-top compound for prayers, trying to limit the potential for violence as tens of thousands attend on a typical Friday.

An Associated Press reporter watched police allow just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50.

Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, their eyes downcast, until the police shepherded them out of the Old City.

“We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,” said Ahmad Barbour, a 57-year-old cleaner in a clean white thobe, seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.

“Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,” he added, referring to Israelis.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

The police later fired tear gas in the Old City and east Jerusalem. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated six wounded people, with at least one beaten up by officers.

In Beirut, thousands of Hezbollah supporters waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans supporting Gaza and calling “death to Israel”.

The Iranian-backed militant group in neighbouring Lebanon has launched attacks since the Hamas assault but largely hasn’t entered the war.

However, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general warned that it will be “on the lookout” for the US and British naval vessels heading to the Mediterranean Sea.