Up to 20,000 demonstrators have marched through the northern English city of Manchester to protest the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The protests on Saturday took place on the eve of the governing Labour Party’s annual gathering.

Protesters packed Manchester’s central Albert Square on Saturday before setting off on a march around the conference centre where delegates will meet.

The five-day Labour meeting begins on Sunday.

A few hundred metres from a hotel where Blair and other party officials will stay, families of some of the British soldiers killed in Iraq set up a “peace camp” of a half dozen tents, where they intended to camp out in hopes of getting the prime minister’s attention.

The Stop the War Coalition, which organised the march, estimated about 30,000 people were participating.

Police initially estimated the crowd at 10,000, then doubled that figure.

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