A thousands-strong march in support of Palestine is taking place in central Rome on Saturday afternoon, RIA Novosti reports.
The column of demonstrators headed from the “Piazza della Cestius“, where the ancient Pyramid of Cestius is located, to the Colosseum and the “San Giovanni in Laterano“ square. The march stretched for two kilometers: while the leading part of the column passed the Colosseum with a banner reading “Stop cooperation with Israel, fight the occupation and genocide“, thousands of others were in the square next to the pyramid.
The organizers of the march, chanting slogans in support of the Palestinian people through a megaphone, estimated the number of participants at “hundreds of thousands“. The Roman police, in a comment to RIA Novosti, were unable to estimate the preliminary number of demonstrators.
The participants in the march are asked to remove all party or union symbols, except for Palestinian flags. A helicopter hovers over the column. After the entire column passes, a large rally will be held in the square near the Lateran Cathedral.
On Friday, demonstrations and marches were held throughout Italy during the strike in support of the Palestinian people and the activists of the “Resistance Flotilla“. According to one of the organizers of the initiative, the CGIL union (Italian General Confederation of Labour), over 2 million people participated. The Interior Ministry estimates that nearly 400,000 demonstrators took to the streets.
