NAHA, Japan, Aug. 8 Kyodo - Some 1,000 Okinawa citizens, labor unionists and activists held a rally in Naha on Sunday urging the U.S. military to drop a plan to build a street battle training facility inside Camp Hansen where large-scale live-fire training has been conducted.

Addressing the rally, Masafumi Ikehara, head of the Igei district in the town of Kin, which is home to a major part of Camp Hansen, said, ''We are opposing the plan because the planned site (of the street fighting training facility) is only 300 meters from residential areas.''

''In the past, there have been accidents involving stray shots and brush fires, so we have lived in terror and with anxieties,'' Ikehara said.

Also at the rally, three junior high school students from the district urged Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to use his influence to try to get the construction plan aborted.

''We, who were born in Igei, will grow up there,'' one of the students said. ''There is no place where we can flee to reside.'' ==Kyodo