CAPITALS, March 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested in major world capitals and cities Saturday, March 22, against the violence of the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq.

In front of the White House, tens of thousands expressed their “shock”, not “awe”, at the bombing of Baghdad, others rallied across the United States and in Canada.

Many marchers referred to televised images of the thundering bombing of Baghdad that U.S. military planners called a campaign to "shock and awe" Iraqi defenders.

"I'm mourning because the 'shock and awe' started yesterday," said Abigail Fletcher, a marcher from Florida, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"They can say they're 'smart bombs,' but smart bombs aren't able to distinguish between military and human targets," she said.

Major anti-war demonstrations and rallies were planned in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities around the country Saturday.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Montreal. Organizers said as many as 200,000 people turned out, though police refused to give a crowd figure.

But even as the antiwar movement appeared to be gaining momentum, with protests held all over North America Friday, U.S. opinion polls showed rising support for the war.

Signs and slogans Saturday were careful not to feed war supporters' arguments that protest in a time of war is unpatriotic.

Protesters carried signs saying: "We support our troops - bring them home!"

One former serviceman, Michael Schmidt of Peoria, Illinois, explained why he was demonstrating in Washington. "I heard a four-year-old girl damn near died over there."

He said it is not unpatriotic to oppose the war. "It's up to me to help the U.S. - from here," he said.

Protesters outside the White House played bongos and chanted as dozens of police officers in black riot gear stood between them and the presidential mansion.

One marcher, Episcopalian priest Paul Tunkle, wondered, "How am I supposed to preach good news and faith ... in a time of war?"

He wore a button bearing the name and age of an Iraqi child: "Quasim, 12."

"I pray for him," the priest from Baltimore, Maryland said.

As many as a quarter of a million people marched through Madrid Saturday to protest the war on Iraq, organizers said, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who has strongly supported the U.S.-led campaign to invade and occupy Iraq.

Crying "No to war!" "Aznar resign!" and "Murderers!", the demonstrators had wanted to march on the government headquarters in the west of the city, but after authorities refused to grant permission the march, proceeded through the center of the capital..

Youths used offensive language as police manned barricades to stop the demonstrators from heading towards the government building, but no clashes were reported.

Hundreds of thousands of people also demonstrated in the northeastern city of Barcelona, and thousands attended rallies in Bilbao, Santander and Seville.

In Germany…

Some 150,000 Germans protested the occupation of Iraq in rallies across the country, police said.

Around 40,000 attended a rally in Berlin to denounce a decision by the German government to allow U.S. aircraft to use its airspace and bases.

In a peaceful demonstration in Frankfurt, Kurdish protesters held up banners bearing slogans criticizing a possible Turkish military intervention in northern Iraq, their anxieties heightened by reports, denied by Ankara, that Turkish troops had entered the area Saturday.

Participants in the Kurdish demonstration also called for the freeing of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party who is serving a life term in a Turkish jail.

The rally in Berlin was the largest of a series of protests across Germany against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Around 11,000 people demonstrated against the war in the southern city of Nuremberg, 10,000 each in the southwestern city of Stuttgart and northern port of Hamburg, and 7,000 people outside the US base in Heidelberg.

Some 300 demonstrators briefly blocked the main entrance to the Spangdahlem U.S. air base, near the western town of Bitburg, which is home to the 52nd fighter wing.

Demonstrators blocked two U.S. military trucks by climbing up on the cabin, and were forcibly removed by police, an AFP correspondent reported.

British anti-war protestors

Voices around Latin America were raised Saturday to condemn the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and a feared massive loss of life.

Declaring himself "shaken" by televised images of the bombing of Baghdad, Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde said it was "very difficult" to understand why the United States had chosen aggression over diplomacy.

"One has to ask: Why not insist on diplomacy, why not have more patience, why, when given a choice between time and blood, should one choose blood?" Duhalde said in a radio address.

In neighboring Chile, some 5,000 people marched at midday in the capital, Santiago, demanding an end to the U.S. and British war on Iraq.

Earlier Saturday, an explosion at a U.S. bank branch appeared linked to anger over the war. Police said they found unsigned pamphlets near a BankBoston branch in eastern Santiago, where assailants dynamited an outdoor automatic cash machine, shattering windows but injuring no one.

A Colombian columnist, meanwhile, called U.S. President George W. Bush "perhaps the most hated man in the world today."

"Bush, perhaps the most hated man in the world today, out of arrogance, revenge, pride, abuse of power, thirst for oil and political and economic interests, is attacking Iraq," Luis Noe Ochoa wrote in the daily El Tiempo.

"It's possible he will kill more people than (Osama) bin Laden," he added, referring to the leader of the al-Qaeda network.

"The reorganization of the Middle East by Texas oilmen is yet another barbarity," blistered another El Tiempo columnist. "The first casualties of this conflict are multilateral democracy and international law."

In Peru, President Alejandro Toledo and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan were condemned for not taking a clear position against the war.

"We feel degraded as human beings, watching a city being bombed on television from our homes," said former foreign minister Luis Gonzales Posada.

"I can't find words to express the pain and repugnance of this event, occurring in full view of the world, violating UN accords and international law."

In London…

Opponents of Occupation of Iraq took to the streets of London by the tens of thousands Saturday, marching on Hyde Park to denounce the U.S.-British invasion as a shocking case of American aggression.

Police, pending a final tally, believed there were fewer than 100,000 protesters, but Stop the War Coalition spokesman Andrew Burgin put the number at 700,000. The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) estimated 150,000.

No serious incidents were reported.

Many participants told AFP reporters that the turnout seemed lower than the one million who joined a February 15 protest against war - the biggest demonstration ever seen in the British capital.

In the west of England, several thousand protesters converged on the RAF Fairford air force base, used by U.S. B-52 bombers flying over Iraq, where they laid flowers at the main gate mourning "the death of democracy".

In France…

French Protest ‘criminal war’

More than 150,000 people filed through the streets of French cities Saturday to denounce "the leaders who dare to bomb the world", organizers said.

Alongside the main gathering in Paris - which drew 90,000 people according to police, 100,000 according to organizers - more than 50,000 people demonstrated in cities including Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and Strasbourg.

"Saddam, old time criminal. Bush, welcome to the club," read one banner in Paris, heaping scorn in equal measures on the Iraqi and US leaders, while another read: "American imperialism: get your bloody hand off the Middle East".

Coming two days after 80,000 people turned out in Paris to denounce the war, Saturday's protests drew a mainly young crowd and passed off peacefully, with the exception of Strasbourg, where a group of 150 youths clashed with police in front of the U.S. consulate.

Demonstrators in Paris set off under bright spring sunshine from the central Place de la Republique, holding up Iraqi flags as a sign of solidarity with the millions of civilians caught in the crossfire between Baghdad and the United States.

Hany, a 17-year-old of Iraqi origin, came to demonstrate along with his father and two small brothers. Earlier Saturday, he managed to talk on the telephone to his family in Baghdad.

"They live just next to the presidential palace. All their windows were shattered after the bombing," he said, adding that although he would welcome a change of regime in Iraq, "it can't be done in five minutes and certainly not with bombs".