Several thousand dedicated peace activists braved cold and wet conditions Saturday to demonstrate against war in traditional Easter peace marches across Germany, DPA reported. Organizers in Frankfurt, from where the peace marches are organized each year, said the turnout was better than last year, with the focus on conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "There are protests right across the republic," a spokesman said. "This is a signal from a truly anti-war movement," said Willi van Ooyen, the chief organizer in recent years. "Halt the foreign deployment of German troops," was the slogan on banners in Munich, in reference primarily to the 3,500 German troops deployed in Afghanistan. Organizers put the turnout in the Bavarian capital at 1,500. They said some 1,000 people had turned out in the south-western city of Stuttgart. There were protests in Hanover, Wiesbaden, Munich, Augsburg and Erlangen, where at most a couple of hundred demonstrators gathered in each centre.
