Por Amarachi Orie, CNN •
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators
across the globe took to the streets on Saturday to call for a ceasefire after
Israel expanded its ground operation in Gaza.
Major world cities, including
London, Istanbul, New York, Baghdad and Rome, saw their centers filled with
protestors, as Gaza experienced an intense bombardment and an electrical and
communications blackout.
Combat Siege
Israel has announced the next
stage of its war against Hamas is underway, after the militant group killed
1,400 people and took hostages in a surprise attack on October 7.
In London, organizers said
hundreds of thousands of demonstrators showed up on Saturday, although Reuters
said police estimated the number was between 50,000 and 70,000 people. A march
last week saw 100,000 take to the streets.
People take part in a
demonstration in solidarity with Palestine in Rome, Italy, on
In videos online, marchers who
had taken over central London were heard chanting: “What do we want? Ceasefire.
When do we want it? Now.”
One woman told Reuters: “I want a
ceasefire. I want peace for people of Gaza. Over the last few days, couple of
weeks, I’ve just watched so many babies and children dying.”
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“I feel so helpless right now,”
she added. “All I felt I could do was come here to demonstrate, to be with
people who are in a similar place. Just trying to raise my voice and just try
and send a message out to people to bring peace.
You know, my heart is actually
breaking right now. I just feel such a loss.”
Police temporarily shut down all
lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan on Saturday after a large group of
demonstrators rallying in support of Palestinians started heading in that
direction.
The demonstration, titled in an
Instagram post as “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza,” started at Brooklyn Museum at 3
p.m., continued up to the front of Barclays Center at 4 p.m. and ended at the
Brooklyn Bridge, according to a post by Within Our Lifetime, which promoted the
demonstrations.
“The more they try and silence
us, repress us, push us off the streets, the larger our numbers will be, the
louder we will be,” said the Palestinian-led community organization in the
post, which spoke of the “Gaza blackout emergency.”
Both UK Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak and US President Joe Biden have supported Israel’s right to defend
itself. President Biden, on the day of the Hamas attack, called his support of
Israel’s security “rock solid and unwavering.”
European Union leaders have
stopped short of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, instead appealing for
humanitarian “pauses.”
On Saturday, Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a crowd of Palestinian supporters in Istanbul that
they should leave the rally “with the determination to never allow new Gaza’s
to arise.”
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