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A demonstrator with mock coffins, which represent Iraqi deaths, protest against the Iraq war in Athens
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ATHENS,
November 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least 13,000
Greeks marched in downtown Athens on Wednesday, November 17, to
protest the US military offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah,
western Baghdad, and the invasion of the oil-rich country.
Chanting
"American killers," protesters carried empty white coffins
daubed with red Arabic writing to voice their opposition to the
massive American sweep into Fallujah, where many of its 300,000
population were killed.
Gathering
outside the American Embassy, which was barricaded by police buses,
the demonstrators unfurled a large banner reading "Hands off
Fallujah," reported CNN.
They
also protested the US-led invasion of Iraq on false pretexts of
finding weapons of mass destruction, none of which ever found in the
country since the April 2003 occupation.
Some
10,000 US marines and army forces, alongside some 2,000 Iraqi national
guard soldiers unleashed
a long expected onslaught on the resistance hub on
November 8, capping long nights of massive US raids.
The
US military claims the reported 1,600 casualties are mostly fighters,
but local inhabitants retorted furiously saying they are civilians.
The
protests also came few days after the cold-blood killing of wounded,
unarmed Iraqi detainees by US marines in a mosque in Fallujah became
public with the airing of the footage taken by NBC.
The
grisly scene generated
revulsion from leading international human rights
watchdogs, which called for an immediate investigation into the US
killing of civilians across occupied Iraq.
Killers
The
Greek demonstrators, mostly members of leftist groups and parties,
lambasted US President George Bush and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon as
"killers of people."
Police
fired tear gas at demonstrators allegedly after they hurled rocks at
bottles at the American Embassy.
A
downtown branch of Citibank was damaged by a firebomb, while
protesters set fire to trash bins near the embassy, CNN said.
More
than 6,000 police were deployed around the city and a helicopter
circled overhead as the marchers gathered outside the embassy.
The
Wednesday's protest came in commemoration of a bloody student revolt
in 1973 against the military dictatorship in Greece.
Many
Greeks blame the United States for having engineered the military
junta's rise in 1967. The November 17, 1973 student protest presaged
the regime's collapse a year later.
An
eyewitness, who escaped the hell in Fallujah, told IslamOnline.net
Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the
western Iraqi city were “deliberately”,
crushed by US tanks.
The
Fallujah onslaught also promoted forty seven Sunni, Shiite, Turkoman
and Christian bodies to
declare
their boycott of the general election slated for early
next year.
