Several thousand people took to the streets to protest the planned re-opening of a lead and zinc smelting factory that environmental activists say polluted the Macedonian city of Veles for three decades.
Organisers hailed the turn-out for the protest late Wednesday as "the first green revolution" in Macedonia.
"Our future cannot be bought," said Nenad Kocic from the Green Coalition which organised the protest, urging authorities not to repeat its mistake of 1973 when the smelter first opened.
The factory in Veles, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the Macedonian capital Skopje, closed in 2003 but recently the private company that bought it, Metrudhem, has said it plans to resume operations in two to three years.
Veles was named a pollution hot spot by the United Nations environmental programme in 2000 which said the smelter emitted large quantities of sulfur dioxide and dust bearing lead, zinc and cadmium into the atmosphere.
The current mayor of Veles, also a member of the Green Coalition, told Sitel that Veles lost more people due to the "factory then in the Second World War", referring to a widespread belief that groundwater pollution caused deaths through cancer.
Macedonia's environment ministry confirmed that Metrudhem had submitted a request for a licence to resume work at the factory, but said permission had not yet been granted.
