There were no serious incident outside the well-guarded mission in the tony Mayfair district as speakers took turns to denounce the war, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Some protesters waved placards, while others held up banners which accused Bush and Blair of being an "axis of evil" and calling upon the prime minister to resign. Police put the size of the crowd at around 1,000.

"I see bombs continuing to fall on innocent people of Iraq," said Asad Rehman, a member of the Stop the War Coalition, which organized the demonstration from BBC headquarters to the embassy gates.

"When I see the pictures of Iraqi people drinking sewage water, I also see the coalition dropping bombs on them," he said.

Though the fall of Baghdad looked imminent, the Stop the War Coalition kept plans in place for a major demonstration in London and more than 30 other cities worldwide on April 12.

Elsewhere in Britain, around 200 activists staged a mock "die-in" at Portsmouth Naval Base, a major Royal Navy facility on the south coast of England.

Protesters also turned up at the Royal Air Force base in Fairford, in the west of England, from where US air force B-52s bombers have been flying missions over Iraq, organizers said.

SPACE.WIRE