Manama, Bahrain ? Thousands of people marched Friday in Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen, burning U.S. flags and effigies of President Bush and demanding Washington scrap plans to invade Iraq.

After Friday prayers, about 5,000 Bahraini protesters marched nearly a mile from Manama’s Ras Rumman mosque to U.N. offices in the capital chanting “death to America, death to Israel.”

Some demonstrators carried placards accusing Washington of wanting to invade Iraq to seize its oil reserves and support Israel, while others urged Bahrain’s government to close the U.S. Navy base on this Persian Gulf island and expel the U.S. ambassador if the United States attacks Iraq.

“Bush is the carbon copy of Hitler who is planning a genocide against the Iraqi people,” activist Fadheela al-Mahroos said as other marchers burned U.S. and Israeli flags and carried a makeshift coffin with “Bush” scrawled on one end.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. 5th Fleet and more than 4,000 American military personnel. The government has long rejected public calls for the U.S. military to leave.

In Egypt, some 3,000 people staged a noisy protest outside downtown Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque against American war plans in Iraq.

In the southern Arabian Peninsula nation of Yemen on Friday, about 6,000 people chanted antiwar slogans, burned an effigy of Bush and tried to march on the U.S. Embassy in San’a.

During weekly Muslim mass prayers, clerics used their sermons to condemn America’s perceived “arrogant policy” in the region.