World shows its anger as millions protest

WASHINGTON - Demonstrations against the war in Iraq erupted on every continent yesterday, as millions expressed their horror at the machinery of death being unleashed in the Arabian desert.

Police arrested more than 1000 people in San Francisco - the most demonstrators taken into custody on a single day in the city in 22 years - as tens of thousands protested across America.

"If this was happening in every city, there'd either be martial law or an end to war," said one Berkeley student who chained himself to 16 others on a major San Francisco street.

Protests took place in other cities across the US as well as in European capitals.

More than 100,000 protested in Germany. In London, thousands blocked roads and scuffled with police. More than 10,000 people, mostly students, surged through Paris chanting anti-war slogans and some burned the US flag.

Many global protests were peaceful, although a handful turned violent, usually when police in riot gear sought to keep marchers away from US embassy and consulate buildings.

In many Muslim countries, the protests gave renewed vigour to Islamist political parties using the war as a powerful recruiting tool, while in the West - including the US itself - participants worried the Bush Administration was recklessly leading the world to a more uncertain and unstable future. "Stop the Bush fire," they chanted in Berlin. "US warmongers go to hell!" read a banner in Kolkata.

In Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world, anti-American sentiment went hand-in-hand with unusually open expressions of anger at the country's autocratic US-backed leadership, highlighting the danger of political upheavals across the Middle East in the war's wake. "Down with Arab leaders!" the crowd chanted, as riot police used water cannon to prevent about 1000 students armed with stones from approaching the US embassy.

Other protests scattered across the Arab world included 1000 women and children burning US and Israeli flags in the Gaza strip and a clash between riot police and 1000 demonstrators outside the British Embassy in Beirut.

In the Philippines, riot police used truncheons to break up a small group of protesters who burned a US flag as well as portraits of Gloria Macapagal, the Philippine President who has stood staunchly by the US. In Indonesia, a Muslim party organised a rally in Jakarta while in Semarang, in Java, police clashed with 50 students after they burned an effigy of the US President. In Pakistan, they denounced "American terrorism", and in Bangladesh Muslim politicians burned US and British flags.

Many of the hundreds of thousands of participants in Western Europe were schoolchildren. In Geneva riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on a crowd of 500 high school and university students marching towards the US mission to the United Nations.

During morning rush hour in Washington DC, more than 100 demonstrators temporarily shut down a major route, the Key Bridge, and about 350 demonstrators blocked evening rush hour traffic on a main Washington thoroughfare.

Protesters shut New York's Broadway for two blocks below 42nd Street.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq