Around 1 million people took to the streets in Morocco's commercial capital to protest U.S. threats to wage war on Iraq

CASABLANCA, Morocco, March 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Marking the ongoing  international popular opposition to a U.S. aggression on Iraq, thousands of people in different countries took to the streets on Sunday, March 2, to protest U.S. threats of war against Iraq.

In Morocco, around one million people took to the streets in Morocco's commercial capital on Sunday to protest at U.S. threats to wage war on Iraq, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

"We are all Iraqis," was the slogan on armbands worn by most of the protestors, who carried banners denouncing the policies of U.S. President George W. Bush as they marched through the center of Casablanca, Morocco's largest city.

The demonstrators also chanted slogans attacking “the fearful reaction of Arab countries to U.S. preparations for war.”

The organizers of the march estimated that as many as one million people were taking part.

The protest in this Atlantic port city of some four million people was organized by the National Iraqi Support Committee, an umbrella group of political and union movements.

The protest was "a message to George Bush to tell him not to go to war with Iraq because such a war would be a war on all Arabs," Khalid Soufiani, one of the organizers of the march, told AFP.

Many of the marchers were from Islamic organizations such as Al Adl Wal Ihssane or were supporters of the main political opposition, the Justice and Development Party.

Tens of thousands of people marched through the center of the capital Rabat last Sunday to protest at U.S. threats to wage war on Iraq.

That protest come after the Moroccan press lambasted Arab countries for their relatively low turnout in global anti-war demonstrations on February 15.

Japanese Warn Against The Use of Depleted Uranium Bombs

The same anti-war message was also clear in Tokyo, where some 6,000 people rallied in the atomic-bombed Japanese city Hiroshima Sunday to protest any U.S. plans to attack Iraq and warned against the use of depleted uranium (DU) bombs, press reports said.

They formed human letters in a Hiroshima park, spelling "No War" and "No Du" in English, according to the Jiji and Kyodo news agencies.

Organizers plan to have an aerial photo of the human letters published as part of an anti-war advertisement in the influential U.S. newspaper, the Washington Post, the reports said.

They noted the United States used depleted uranium in shells during the 1991 Gulf War. The shells are suspected of causing high levels of radioactive contamination and a sharp rise in various forms of cancer and malformations in Iraqi babies.

"There are Iraqi people who were exposed to radiation through depleted uranium shells used by the United States during the Gulf War," Kobe University professor Nobuo Kazashi, a member of the rally's organizing committee, told Jiji Press.

Hiroshima, along with the Japanese city of Nagasaki, has rebuilt itself from the ruins of a U.S. atomic-bombing in the closing days of World War II, the first and only nuclear attack on mankind.

Okinawan singer Shokichi Kina, famous around Asia for his hit song "Hana (Flower)", who recently held a peace concert in Baghdad, was among musicians who performed at the Hiroshima rally, the reports said.

Anti-War Rally in Pakistan

Thousands, some chanting 'America is the terrorist,' marched in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi on Sunday to protest a possible U.S.-led

Meanwhile in Pakistan, a top Islamic leader Sunday warned that his party would cripple the government if it voted in the United Nations for a U.S. resolution against Iraq as tens of thousands took part in Pakistan's biggest protest so far against war 

"I warn our government that if they voted in favor of the United States we will not allow the government to operate," Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the most organized fundamentalist party, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), told the slogan-chanting crowd.

"I also want to give a message to the world that Muslims are not terrorists, Jihad (holy war) is against terrorism. We are victims in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Afghanistan and now in Iraq."

Ahmad reiterated that "attack on Iraq will be considered as attack on Islam."

Ahmad, who is also vice president of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a six-party Islamic alliance that had vowed to bring more than a million on to the streets of Karachi for the protest, described the turnout as "the biggest rally in the world" which showed people hate war and want peace.

Karachi police chief Tariq Jamil estimated the crowd at more than 100,000 while a spokesman for the MMA told reporters before the start of the meeting that half a million had already thronged the city's main boulevard.

MMA chief Shah Ahmed Noorani called upon the parliament to adopt a resolution that "the U.S. should not be allowed to use our land and bases for attack on Iraq."

Maulana Fazlur Rehman, an Islamist leader, whose Jamiat Ulemae Islam party was a key backer of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, said that the U.S. forces went to Afghanistan "not to capture Osama bin Laden but to capture the Islamic world and its oil wealth."

"America is a terrorist and we will not allow terrorism on Iraq."

Protestors chanted "No blood for oil" and burnt effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Snaking two kilometers (1.24 miles) through the city center, it was the biggest demonstration witnessed in Karachi since the U.S.-led war that ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The participants also shouted "Drop Bush, not bombs."

Police beefed up security by erecting large containers on roads, especially around the US consulate, where two police guards were shot dead by a lone assailant Friday, and other diplomatic missions.

Earlier, Pakistani tribesmen at an anti-U.S. rally in the MMA-ruled North West Frontier Province (NWFP) threatened to target American interests if Iraq was invaded.

The rally in Jamrud town, some 10 kilometers (six miles) west of the provincial capital Peshawar, was attended by about 3,500 ethnic Pashtuns living in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, organizers said.

The participants, some armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, torched a US flag and chanted slogans against war on Iraq.

"If Americans attacked Iraq, we would be free to target America at any place," Malik Ismail, an elder of local Torkhel tribe, told the gathering.

Yemenis Stage Third Day of Anti-War Protests

Thousands of Yemenis poured on to the streets of Sanaa on Sunday for the third day running to demonstrate against U.S. threats to wage war on Iraq and urge Arab to back Baghdad.

The organizers said 20,000 marched through the capital Sanaa, but security force blocked the access to the U.S. embassy.

The protest came after Arab leaders held a summit in Egypt and rejected a punitive war against Iraq but failed to mend deep differences over the crisis.

Al-Islah ideologue Sheikh Abdul Majid Zindani addressed the demonstration, hailing anti-war countries but condemning "the colonialist objectives of the Americans in this region."

On Saturday, March 1, hundreds of thousands turned out for a protest, organized by political parties and trade unions.

An estimated 10,000 people demonstrated in Sanaa Friday, February 28, against a U.S.-led war on Iraq, burning effigies of Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, as well as U.S. and Israeli flags.