Police in Washington arrested 33 people for blocking entrances to the Internal Revenue Service, organizers and local media reported, as demonstrators sought to focus attention on taxpayers' money that bankrolls the deployment of about 158,000 troops in Iraq.

"This war needs to end and it needs to end now," Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, told AFP.

In protests in San Francisco, police arrested more than a dozen people.

Demonstrators nationwide targeted government agencies, lawmakers, oil companies and "corporate media" who they accuse of promoting and sustaining the war, organizers said in a statement.

The protests went ahead as the death toll of US soldiers approaches 4,000 in a war that remains unpopular among American voters.

Hundreds of people showed up for events throughout Washington by midday and organizers expected "thousands" to attend rallies later in the day.

But public disapproval of the war has yet to translate into massive waves of street demonstrations in the United States like those seen during the Vietnam war.

While the war remains unpopular, with a majority of Americans calling the decision to invade a mistake, public opinion is divided over when to withdraw the US soldiers deployed in Iraq.

"It's really time we end this occupation force and start making amends," said Rachel Payne, 19, who joined a small demonstration in front of the American Petroleum Institute not far from the White House.

As protesters banged drums with police looking on, Payne held up a sign reading "What's our exit strategy?"

Anti-war groups organized civil disobedience and quirky events, seeking to disrupt traffic against "war profiteers" on K Street in Washington, known as the home to corporate lobbyists.

In Washington and New York, protesters from the Granny Peace Brigade held "knit-ins" to call attention to wounded soldiers and Iraqis, making stump socks for amputee veterans and baby blankets for Iraqi children.

While grandmothers sat knitting in windy weather in fold-up chairs just a block from the White House, a few dozen women in New York held a "knit-in" at the Times Square military recruitment center that was targeted in a home-made bomb attack earlier this month.

"The war's been going on for five years and most Americans behave as though it's irrelevant," said one protester, Amy Wagner.

"I'm out here knitting stump socks for amputees because they'll be with us a long, long time and people shouldn't forget that," she said.

A handful of counter-demonstrators waved US flags and shouted back, "We support our brave troops" and "No American is forced to serve," while accusing the grandmothers of trying to demoralize US troops.

In San Francisco, seven people were detained after chaining themselves to gates outside the Federal Reserve Bank building while nine people wearing hats with the slogan "No blood for oil" were arrested outside offices of oil giant Chevron.

In Los Angeles, protesters were due to descend on a military recruitment center in the heart of Hollywood in the city's biggest rally, officials from the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and Racism) coalition said.

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