Revelations of Prince Harry's frontline activity made prominent headlines - and received positive reaction - in the Middle Eastern media.

One leading editor praised the royal's courage, suggesting that Arab princes, by contrast, send others into battle while they remain in the safety of their lavish palaces.

But others proudly pointed out that the Arab world also had its heroic princes who had not only risked their lives but died for their country.

Newspapers in Iran, which has no affection for royalty in general and even less for the British monarchy in particular, do not publish on Friday. But Iranian web news agencies generally ignored the Prince Harry story.

Across the Persian Gulf, in Saudi Arabia - a monarchy with good ties to Buckingham Palace - the story was well-covered.

“Prince Harry Taking on The Taleban,” was the enthusiastic front-page headline over a story in Arab News, an English language Saudi daily.

The editor, Khaled al-Maeena, told The Times: “I met a lady in the supermarket this morning who said it was a great thing and that the Queen shouldn’t pull him (Prince Harry) back.” Many Saudis were following Prince Harry’s exploits on the BBC and CNN, he said.

For al-Jazeera, the most watched television station in the Middle East, Prince Harry was not a major news item. Prominence was instead given to Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip that have killed about 30 Palestinians, including six children, in the past two days.

“From a human aspect this is predominant in the news for our audience,” a senior editor at the Qatar-based channel said. Today, al-Jazeera has also been busy investigating reports that America was deploying the USS Cole warship off the Lebanese coast.

“I’ll discuss the Prince Harry story with our producers today to see what we’ll do about it,” the al-Jazeera editor said, making clear the story was not uppermost in his mind.

Prince Harry made the front-page of al-Quds al-Arabi, a pan-Arab newspaper published in London which is usually very critical of Anglo-American foreign policy. But the newspaper’s chief editor spoke highly of the young British royal. “It’s an extremely significant, important story for us. He’s the grandson of the Queen on the frontline,” said Abdelbari Atwan.

“He is giving a good example to his own people. He’s endangering his life and he’s not scared to fight for his country,” Mr Atwan said, addding that the newspaper had contrasted “the brother of the future British king fighting without publicity” to “Arab royal families who prefer to stay in their palaces and enjoy the oil wealth of their countries”.

Others said that comparison was unfair, pointing out that leading Arab princes had fought in the first Gulf War in 1991, liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

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