ST LOUIS: A gigantic crowd numbered by police at 100,000 people turned out for a rally here today by Democrat Barack Obama on the closing stretch of the White House campaign.

"What a magnificent sight. All I can say is, wow!" the Illinois senator said as he looked over the sea of supporters massed under the soaring St Louis Gateway Arch, which at 630 feet (192 meters) is the nation s tallest monument.

According to Obama s campaign, Lieutenant Samuel Dotson of the St Louis Police Department had confirmed 90,000 in a park under the arch, also known as Missouri s "Gateway to the West." Dotson said another 10,000 were still filing into the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial park next to the Mississippi River, as Obama laid out his case against Republican John McCain ahead of the November 4 election.

Missouri is among the tightest contests in the so-called battleground states that the candidates are criss-crossing in the final weeks of their campaigns.

In late August, 84,000 supporters heard Obama accept the Democratic nomination inside a Denver sports stadium. In May, he attracted 75,000 people to an outdoor rally in Portland, Oregon.

The Democrat's biggest audience yet came not in the United States but in the German capital during a rapturously received tour of Europe in late July, when 200,000 heard him speak not far from the footprint of the former Berlin Wall.
Source : PTI