Nearly 4,000 people marched in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, and 2,000 in the southwestern city of Heidelberg.

"The liberation of Iraq came at too high a price," Bishop Ulrich Fischer told 700 people attending a demonstration in nearby Karlsruhe.

In many cities the marches were considerably smaller than anti-war demonstrations held before and immediately after the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20.

Several thousand people attended Easter pacifist marches in Germany on Friday.

The marches began in Britain in the 1950s in favor of nuclear disarmament, reaching their zenith in Germany in 1983 when 700,000 people marched against the deployment of Pershing II and cruise nuclear missiles in western Europe.

SPACE.WIRE