About 400 anti-war activists converged near Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, many of them lying on their backs near the intersection of 49th Street and 5th Avenue and others holding signs and chanting “No War, No Oil, No Profit.”

The two-hour peaceful protest, which closed part of 5th Avenue and snarled city traffic, was the latest of several acts of civil disobedience and anti-war demonstrations in New York and other large US cities.

Another day of anti-war protests across the Arab world saw 100,000 take to the streets in Yemen, while Egypt threatened a crackdown on demonstrations over fear of potential civil unrest.

Police and organizers said around 100,000 people turned out in the Yemeni capital Sanaa after the protest was announced on state television Wednesday night. The marchers, venting their anger at the “unjustified” invasion of Iraq led by the United States, chanted: “Jihad, jihad, from Sanaa to Baghdad!” calling for a holy war.

In Lebanon, protesters took to the streets for the eighth day running, 5,000 schoolchildren and university students joining forces in front of the UN building in Beirut.

In southern Lebanon, more than 7,000 women heeded a call by the Hamas movement to march through the refugee camp of Bourj Ash-Shamali, east of Tyre.

More than 10,000 people rallied in the northern Egyptian city of Zagazig, after an appeal from provincial authorities, and dispersed peacefully after two hours at the town’s central stadium.

For an eighth day, anti-war protests drew small but boisterous crowds in several cities across Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation. Demonstrators condemned the war and called for boycotts of US-made products.

In Australia, New South Wales state police said they would seek a Supreme Court injunction to block a protest planned next week by the “Books not Bombs Coalition,” which organized Wednesday’s violent rally in downtown Sydney.

Wednesday’s rally turned into a riot, with protesters pelting police with tables and chairs. Police in riot gear arrested 33 people.

In South Korea, about 650 protesters, many of them teachers, rallied near the National Assembly to urge legislators to vote against a government bill to dispatch 600 military engineers and 100 medical personnel to support the US-led war in Iraq.

In Germany, thousands more school students hit the streets yesterday in protest against the war, while a group of mothers began a 100-km peace march from the eastern town of Eisenhuettenstadt near the Polish border to Berlin, police said.