US: Tens of thousands of protesters marched around the White House on Saturday in the first large-scale demonstration against the occupation of Iraq by US-led forces since President Bush declared an end to major combat.
The protesters, waving placards demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, gathered at a rally at the Washington Monument before moving towards the White House.
Peace activists, joined by family members of US troops, said the mounting casualties in Iraq had helped spur the US anti-war movement into action after months of relative quiet.
"We need to make President Bush realise that our children are being killed," said Mr Fernando de Solar Suarez, whose son, a marine, was killed in Iraq on March 27th.
Since May 1st, when President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over, 108 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks.
Many of the protesters said they felt the cost of the Iraq occupation in American lives was too high and the billions of dollars being spent on reconstructing the country's shattered economy could be put to better use at home. "We need to quit worrying about the ills of other countries and to stop spending billions of dollars on Iraq when we need money for jobs here," said Washington resident Mr Erik Jurek, who added he was worried about his brother serving in the US army in Baghdad.
The group United for Peace and Justice, which co-ordinated the protest with International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), estimated that 100,000 people from more than 145 cities attended.
One man sold T-shirts that read "Osama bin Rumsfeld", depicting the US Defence Secretary in a head-covering similar to many pictures of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
The call to pull US troops out of Iraq was echoed in San Francisco, where several thousand anti-war protesters crowded into a plaza in front of City Hall.
The rally was peaceful, in contrast to past demonstrations in the city, which have ended with hundreds of arrests.
"We must stop the war now, get our troops home, and deny Bush any credibility so he can't take us into another war," said Mr John Scanlon, a former marine who served in Vietnam and came from San Diego with a group of other veterans. - (Reuters)