News In Brief

30,000 women protest at English missile base

Thousands of women antinuclear protesters besieged Britain's sprawling cruise nuclear missile base Sunday and briefly forced breaches in its 10-foot perimeter fence.

Chanting, singing, and blowing trumpets, they assaulted sections of the nine-mile fence during a huge protest here, 50 miles west of London. The demonstration by 30,000 women was the biggest against the presence of cruise nuclear missiles in Britain since the first batch of an eventual 96 arrived at the base last month.

Meanwhile, West German riot police fired water cannon and arrested 53 people Monday to break up blockades of two US military installations by protesteors. The arrests brought the number of people taken into custody to 603 in four days of renewed protests against the deployment of new US missiles in West Germany.