Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators flocked onto city streets on Saturday for the third consecutive day of protest against the U.S.-led bombardment of Iraq.

In Rome, around 30,000 demonstrators gathered in the central Piazza del Popolo before the start of a rally organized by the centre-left Olive Tree opposition expected to draw tens of thousands more as the day wore on.

The leader of the country's biggest labor union, Guglielmo Epifani of the CGIL, scotched rumors that the country faced another general strike over the war. His and other major unions called a two-hour general strike last Thursday, the day the invasion began.

"We've already had one strike of two hours as well as a Europe-wide strike for peace. We don't need to strike every second to confirm the state of Italy's soul, and that of the majority of its citizens," Epifani said.

Meanwhile, the Stop the War committee, made up of pacifist organizations, trade unions, environmentalists and anti-globalization activists, was planning a separate demonstration in another city square.

A peace march through the southern port city of Naples ended at the gates of NATO's Southern Command headquarters in the Bagnoli quarter, where a U.S. flag was set alight.

Pacifists from unions and anti-globalization groups carried papier-mache missiles in reference to the relentless air assault on Baghdad overnight.

"With this protest, we want to express our disagreement with the policy of the Berlusconi government and the autonomous choice of the U.S. to carry out an unjust war which humanity doesn't want," one of the organizers said.

"The death and butchery which the U.S. wants to call peace are not acceptable to civil society," said Francesco Caruso, a leader of the anti-globalization "disobedients" group.

In Milan, crowds waved flags representing a broad cross section of Italian left-wing parties, as well as the United Nations' flag, as a huge march got underway in the economic capital.

Muslims led a march through the capital of Trinidad and Tobago Friday to protest the U.S.-led war in Iraq, organizers announced, reported AFP.

The marchers - members of the Anjuman Sunnat Ul Jamaat Association and the National Women's Organization -- called for an immediate end to the conflict, according to Imam Wahid Ali, the main organizer.

In a statement, Ali said an "attack against Iraq is like attacking Muslims. By its actions, the U.S. has marginalized the United Nations and put innocent lives at risk."

With heavy police surveillance around the capital of this twin-island Caribbean nation, protesters marched to the U.S. embassy and the British High Commission, delivering petitions condemning the attack as unjust and illegal.

The petitions called for the full removal of U.S. and British troops from Iraq and for the resumption of talks.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning also called the war "unjust," stressing that the United Nations should have been given more time to develop a resolution.

Some 400 demonstrators marched Saturday to the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo where they burned a U.S. flag to protest the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

"A peaceful, silent protest is now the only way to express frustration with the U.S. operation in Iraq, since words have become worthless," said Fedja Stukan, a Bosnian actor who organized the protest.

Demonstrators at the largely peaceful rally held under heavy police presence, included several nationals from Britain and the United States, whose troops are waging the attacks on Iraq.

"I do not believe in my president and I want to represent America in a peaceful way," said Wesley Rosen, a 22-year-old student from New York.

"Bush is a terrorist. Is oil worth more than human blood?," read banners at the rally, where demonstrators called on Bush to do the world a favor and "commit suicide."

A record 20,000 protestors poured onto the streets of the Finnish capital Saturday to protest the U.S.-led war on Iraq, police said.

The peaceful gathering in central Helsinki was the largest demonstration in recent memory in this neutral country of more than five million people.

On February 15, some 12,000 Finns had rallied in Helsinki against a looming war.

More than 20,000 students turned out Saturday for a third day of heated anti-war protests across Egypt, with an angry crowd in Cairo's Islamic Al-Azhar University burning U.S., British and Israeli flags.

The students gathered on the Al-Azhar campus also called on President Hosni Mubarak to provide military help to Iraq to fight the U.S. and British forces who invaded the country on Thursday.

"Mubarak must fight or go to the devil," the protestors chanted, some holding copies of the Koran.

"Where is the pride of our government, which has done nothing better than the useless Arab summit," they cried, in reference to the Sharm El-Sheik gathering of the region's leaders in early March.

"Bush may kill Saddam, but he cannot kill our Islam and destroy the ground of Islam," said Ahmed, a chemistry student.

Anti-riot forces were deployed outside the campus to prevent demonstrators from moving onto the streets. Under an emergency law street protests are banned in Egypt, with demonstrations permitted only on university campuses or in mosque complexes.

Around 6,000 students protested at other universities in Cairo, while some 5,000 demonstrated in the northern port city of Alexandria and a further 3,000 in Suez on the Red Sea.

A thousand lawyers meanwhile organized a sit-in to protest the U.S.-led attack on Iraq at the Cairo headquarters of their legal association.

Police were out in force across Cairo, particularly around the U.S. and British embassies where demonstrations were expected for the third consecutive day.

More than 40 protestors, including two opposition deputies, and 10 police officers were wounded in clashes after Friday prayers, witnesses said. Several hundred people were also arrested, according to legal sources.

An anti-war protest by some 60 youngsters outside the U.S. embassy in Bahrain spilled over into clashes with police for a second day Saturday, an AFP correspondent reported.

Large numbers of security forces used teargas to keep demonstrators away from the embassy compound in Manama after the group, mainly school students, lobbed stones.

Police put barbed wire around the building which is already protected by reinforced concrete blast blocks.

The mission was closed for at least the day after trouble erupted on Friday in the Gulf state that is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

Some 300 youths waged street battles with police Friday when an interior ministry official said two gas bottles exploded during the protest.

An opposition movement spokesman, Mohammad Fakhro, told Al-Jazeera television about 40 people had been injured in the two days of violence.

The protests took place despite an appeal for calm issued Thursday by Bahrain's King Hamad.

Some 5,000 Americans, most of them military personnel, live in Bahrain. Non-essential staff at the embassy were allowed to depart last month.

Riot police splashed with red paint in Athens

Around 400 students demonstrated against the U.S.-led war on Iraq Saturday outside the U.S. embassy in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, police said.

The protestors carried banners reading "No war, no bombs, no blood", "War is not the answer", "Stop war, stop Bush, stop killings" and "U.S. Army go way".

The students sang Vietnamese songs and shouted "No Bush" as dozens of police manned a security cordon around the embassy building.

One student told AFP the demonstrators would gather every day until the war was over.

The protestors tried to take the demonstration to the centre of Hanoi but were made to disperse.

On Friday around 200 students gathered outside the embassy in what appeared to be a spontaneous anti-U.S. demonstration. Earlier protests were mounted at the initiative of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party.

On Wednesday tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators took to the streets of the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City and several other provincial cities.

In Pakistan…

Pakistanis Saturday marked another day of protest against the war on Iraq with a string of small rallies in cities across the country, witnesses said.

About a hundred people gathered in a marketplace in the capital Islamabad chanting slogans against the United States and British military invasion of the Muslim country before dispersing peacefully after half an hour, they said.

Five separate rallies were held in North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, including three in the provincial capital Peshawar.

"Muslim countries should sever all diplomatic relations with the United States and Britain and Pakistanis should boycott products from the two countries," Arbab Khan Afridi, President of Peshawar University Teachers Association told a rally of about 500 teachers and students.

About 600 people shouted "death to Bush and stop genocide of Muslims" at another rally in the Jamrud tribal area in North West Frontier Province.

Protesters burnt effigies of U.S. President George Bush shouting "Bush is a murderer" in several small rallies in the eastern border city of Lahore.

Pakistan's powerful Islamic bloc Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal has called for a massive march in Lahore on Sunday.

In Asia…

Indonesians

Thousands of protestors took to the streets of cities across Asia Saturday to demand an end to the U.S.-led war against Iraq, burning effigies of US President George W. Bush and appealing for peace.

In Jakarta, some 3,000 protestors picketed the U.S. embassy, branding Bush and his allies British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard "terrorists" and "war criminals," witnesses said.

"We condemn the evil aggression against Iraq. Bush, Blair and Howard should be brought to the international court of justice as war criminals," Hizb ut Tahrir, the Muslim group which organized the rally, said in a statement.

The protestors, many of them women, carried a coffin to symbolize the death of the United Nations, which failed to prevent war on Iraq. They later moved their protest to the nearby British embassy.

An anti-war protest was also staged by about 1,500 people in Yogyakarta in central Java. "America is not a global cop," read a poster at the rally.

In Padang, capital of West Sumatra province, hundreds of students burned Bush's effigy in a protest, the state Antara news agency reported.

In Japan, about 700 people held a rally in the country's second largest city Osaka. Tens of thousands of Japanese had taken to the streets of Tokyo Friday demanding the United States immediately end the war.

In Bangkok, some 500 anti-war protestors demonstrated outside the US embassy, witnesses said. They called on Thai Muslims to boycott goods from the United States and allies Britain, Israel, Spain, Australia and Italy.

In Taipei, nearly 100 protesters carrying banners reading "No Blood for Oil" and "Stop Bush Murderer" marched on the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan.

In Arab World…

In Gaza City, nearly 10,000 people demonstrated, mostly students from the local Islamic University, carrying Hamas banners as a gesture of support for the main Palestinian Islamic movement, and Iraqi flags, while chanting their opposition to the U.S., Britain and their Arab allies.

Around 800 female students, veiled from head to foot, followed the main procession in silence.

In northern Lebanon, in the Palestinian refugee camps of Bared and Baddaoui, thousands of Palestinian schoolchildren demonstrated and called for a boycott of American goods.

Waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags, clutching portraits of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, they chanted: "With our blood, we will defend you, Iraq" and "People of Iraq, we are with you".

In the capital Beirut, a demonstration was expected in the afternoon in front of the Kuwaiti embassy, which was ringed by an impressive security cordon, while more protests were planned in front of the U.N. building.

In southern Lebanon, in the main square of Tyre, 10 Lebanese and Palestinian lawyers set up three tents and began a hunger strike in support of the Iraqi people.

Around 1,000 Syrian and Palestinian students from the Faculty of Letters at Damascus University took to the streets of the Syrian capital, chanting: "We will sacrifice ourselves for you, Baghdad."

In Algeria, the entire country observed a minute's silence as a gesture of "solidarity with the Iraqi people" at the government's request, while in Tunisia some 5,000 marched through the capital amid tight security.