Today's Edition
WASHINGTON (AFP)
US President Donald Trump hosted the largest military parade in decades on his 79th birthday on Saturday, even as protesters raged across the country.
Trump hailed the United States as the "hottest country in the world" after watching tanks, aircraft and troops file past him in Washington to honor the 250th anniversary of the US army.
The parade formed a stark split screen with turmoil at home and abroad, as police used teargas to disperse protesters in Los Angeles and US ally Israel traded missile fire with Iran in a rapidly escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Trump delivered an unusually brief speech, and focused on praising the US army, saying that they "fight, fight, fight, and they win, win, win."
In his address to the parade, Trump sent a warning to Washington's adversaries of "total and complete" defeat, with the US increasingly at risk of getting tangled up in Israel's conflict with Iran.
Trump had openly mentioned since his first term as president of having a grand military parade. The last such parade in the US was at the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
During the event, Trump stood and saluted on a stage outside the White House as tanks rumbled past, aircraft roared overhead and nearly 7,000 troops marched past.
Troops and military hardware from different eras of US history passed by, with an announcer reeling off victories in battles with Japanese, German, Chinese and Vietnamese forces in past wars.
The army said the parade cost up to $45 million.
The crowd also sang "Happy Birthday" for Trump.
Elsewhere in the US, protesters gathered in hundreds of cities. Thousands turned out in Los Angeles to protest Trump's deployment of troops in the country's second-largest city following clashes sparked by immigration raids.
There was also a shooting at a demonstration in the western US city of Salt Lake City, leaving at least one person critically injured, according to police.
The killing of a Democratic lawmaker and her husband Saturday in the northern state of Minnesota -- in what the governor called a targeted attack -- also cast a pall over the parade. Trump was however quick to condemn the attacks outside Minneapolis in which former state speaker Melissa Hortman was killed along with her husband, while another state lawmaker and his wife were hospitalised with gunshot wounds.
