Italian police moved in after protesters against a possible war in Iraq attached themselves to railway tracks in the north of the country to block two US military trains carrying troops and equipment.

Police repeatedly charged a group of around 40 protesters blocking the track near San Martino Buon Albergo, not far from Verona.

The trains were blocked by the protesters shortly after they started their journey from a base in nearby Vicenza to the US military base of Camp Darby in the Tuscany region.

The authorities were forced to close Verona's Porta Nuova train station and divert the trains onto other lines after groups of protesters spread themselves along the lines, acting on information leaked by rail unions and using mobile phones and radios to communicate.

Police also stepped in when demonstrators lit fires on the tracks near the city of Padua.

Another protest at a station in San Rossore forced the convoy to reverse and take another route to its destination.

An earlier train took 12 hours to reach Camp Darby after encountering repeated protests.

The group leading the blockades is part of the anti-globalization movement and calls itself the "Disobedients".

"Our campaign of civil disobedience against the war will continue," it said in a statement after Saturday's action.

Italy's Refounded Communist and Green parties are also linked to the protests, along with the Legambiente environmentalist group.

Italy has no military engagements except the several thousand peacekeepers it has sent to Afghanistan, but is indirectly aiding the US troop build-up in the Gulf by allowing the use of its airspace, transport networks, ports and military bases.

Camp Darby, which is near the Tuscan city of Pisa, houses one of the biggest US ammunition dumps in Europe.

Anti-war protesters also took to the streets elsewhere in Europe on Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in Germany's western city of Cologne and in front of a US air base near the central city of Frankfurt.

In Greece, some 600 people demonstrated on the sidelines of a meeting of European Union energy ministers in the northern city of Salonika.

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