UK protesters call for Gaza peace
- 00:01:04
- ITN
UK protesters call for Gaza peace
Britain's biggest pro-Palestine demonstration is taking place as fighting continues in Gaza despite a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Organisers predicted more than 100,000 people would join the massive march through central London in protest at Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip. Celebrities including musicians Brian Eno and Annie Lennox were expected to speak at a rally before the procession from Hyde Park to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. The march will include rallies at the start and end addressed by speakers including Eno, film star Juliet Stevenson, former London mayor Ken Livingstone and Cherie Blair's half-sister Lauren Booth. Organisers - including Stop the War Coalition, the British Muslim Initiative and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign - said they hoped there would be no repeat of the ugly clashes with police that marred a demonstration in London last Saturday. Lindsey German, Stop the War's convenor, said the march would be a passionate, but peaceful protest. On Sunday, the Board of Deputies of British Jews will also hold a rally calling for peace in Israel and Gaza in Trafalgar Square in central London. Air strikes by Israel's military hit more than 30 targets in Gaza on Friday, killing at least one child, while Hamas launched a barrage of rocket attacks on two cities in the Jewish state. Medical officials in the Gaza Strip said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 784. The fresh waves of violence came as the UN called for an independent war crimes investigation into reports that Israeli soldiers shelled a house that they knew contained more than 100 Palestinians. Navi Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for human rights, said the incident appeared to have "all the elements of war crimes". Aid agencies warned that medical facilities in Gaza were at breaking point and that babies were dying because parents were unable to take their children to hospital.
ITN | January 10, 2009
