Riot police fired teargas at anti-war protestors in Kuala Lumpur today after they demonstrated outside the US embassy against the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Chanting "Damn George Bush, Damn Tony Blair," some 400 people from the Coalition Against War-Malaysia gathered outside the embassy in the sweltering heat.

Many carried placards that read "Don't Kill Innocent People", "Stop the Imperialist War", "Get Out Of Iraq" and "No more blood for oil".

Police ordered the crowd to disperse after nearly an hour but protest organisers said teargas was fired at the demonstrators before they were able to move away.

"There were women, children, old people in the crowd. It is a peaceful protest. There was no provocation. Yet they fired water laced with chemicals. They want us to suffer," said S Arutchelvan, one of the rally's organisers.

"Even when we wanted to disperse, as we were retreating, they shot us (with teargas)," he said.

Mohamad Nasir Hashim, chairman of the opposition Socialist Party of Malaysia, who participated in the march, said: "As far as I am concerned, the police are not professional."

No arrests made

However district police chief Mohamad Noor Masdar told AFP that the demonstration was an "illegal assembly."

"We asked them to disperse but they didn't," he said, adding no arrests were made.

The protest was held in conjunction with other protests in major cities around the world to mark the second anniversary of the Iraq war on March 19, Arutchelvan said.

"The Coalition Against War-Malaysia condemns the numerous indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civillians carried out by US and British occupying forces," it said in a statement.

"We call for the immediate withdrawal of coalition forces and the dismantling of their military bases in favour of the Iraqi people being left free to build their county's infrastructure," it said.

"We now call on the US and British government to recognise that the continuing occupation of Iraq is unjustifiable and destructive of both lives and resources and call on President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to name an early date for the withdrawal of the American and British armed forces."

The government of this mainly-Muslim Southeast Asian nation, hailed by Washington for its support in the war against terrorism, has condemned the war against Iraq.

Photos by Colin Nicholas and Roshan Jason.