Significant protests around the world Saturday

By Associated Press, 3/29/2003 20:00

Demonstrations around the world Saturday related to the war in Iraq:

More than 100,000 people protested in cities across Germany, including 30,000 people who held hands in a 31-mile chain between two northwestern cities.

Hundreds of women covered in black robes protested in San'a, Yemen. Some carried placards declaring ''the United States and Britain are the axis of evil.''

In the United States, 8,000 to 12,000 war supporters gathered on the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol. Thousands also marched to support the military in Miami and on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and a few hundred people rallied for U.S. troops in San Francisco.

About 15,000 anti-war protesters lay down in Boston streets to protest the war. Hundreds also rallied in Los Angeles, New York City, Paterson, N.J., and Boulder, Colo.

About 3,000 protested in Santiago, Chile, and 100 demonstrated in Caracas, Venezuela. One Caracas protester said of the U.S.-led coalition: ''Those wretched gringos decided to leapfrog the U.N.'s authority.''

Marchers in Rome hung black mourning banners from the city's bridges. At Vicenza in northeastern Italy, demonstrators threw red paint and flares at the walls of a U.S. military base where hundreds of paratroopers now in northern Iraq had been based.

15,000 turned out in Athens, Greece. Some protesters spattered paint on the road outside the U.S. Embassy and on the windows of a McDonald's restaurant.

Protests in Paris attracted about 10,000 people but turned violent when 20 youths mobbed a couple angry with demonstrators who carried pictures of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The two were bruised and treated at the scene.