IRAQ \ Latest developments

Thousands of anti-war demonstrators took to the streets around the world Saturday, marking the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with demands that coalition troops leave immediately. Wael Musfar of the Arab Muslim American Federation addressed more than 1,000 people who gathered in Times Square in New York near a recruiting station, which was guarded by police. "We say enough hypocrisy, enough lies, our soldiers must come home now," Musfar said from a parked flatbed truck. Protests also were held in Australia, Asia and Europe, but many events were far smaller than organizers had hoped. In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city. Protesters in several cities worldwide carried posters showing pictures of President Bush, calling him the "World's No. 1 terrorist." In Turkey, where opposition to the war cuts across all political stripes, about 3,000 protesters gathered in Istanbul, police said. "Murderer USA," read a sign in Taksim Square.
American and Iraqi troops pushing through a desolate area of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland rounded up dozens more suspected insurgents, including reported killers of a television journalist, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Saturday. In Baghdad, meanwhile, a dozen more bodies were found as a shadowy war of Shiite-Sunni reprisals went on. And Shiite Muslim pilgrims heading to the holy city of Karbala again came under attack, with a roadside bomb killing one and wounding five. Reports of violence came from elsewhere as well: an oil tanker driver shot dead 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, a tribal sheik slain 30 miles west of the capital, a car bombing near a U.S. base in the northern city of Tal Afar in which the suicide driver was the only casualty.
Source: Associated Press