Violence erupts in London as pro-Palestine activists clash with police

Violence erupted in London yesterday as pro-Palestine protesters clashed with police during a demonstration against the continued conflict in the Middle East.

Dozens more people, including as many as ten children, have been killed overnight as Israel and Hamas fired retaliatory missile strikes, with the UN’s Security Council due to meet today to discuss the continuing crisis. 

Activists waving flags, banners and placards, featuring messages including ‘Hands Off Jerusalem’, took to the streets of the English capital on Tuesday to call for an end to the growing unrest.

Former Labour Jeremy Corbyn was also in attendance, addressing thousands of demonstrators who gathered in the city.

But it is understood tensions flared when police attempted to escort away a small group of pro-Israel counter-protesters.

At one point, footage appears to show a demonstrator seemingly deliberately landing on top of two counter-protesters.

Apparently jumping down from above the activist plants both feet on the back and neck of the two counter-protesters before being accosted by officers. 

The demonstration in London, held opposite Downing Street, attracted thousands following recent protests in Jerusalem against the eviction of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah.

It comes as officials in Gaza said 32 Palestinians – including ten children – have been killed in the latest clashes. 

The Israeli military claimed at least 16 of the dead were militants, while seven deaths have been attributed to the same family, including three children. Some may have been the result of errant Hamas missiles. 

In Israel, three women have been killed – one in her 60s and another in her 80s – during Hamas rocket attacks earlier on Tuesday, and a third victim aged 50 on Tuesday evening when a rocket hit a building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Lezion.

The renewed confrontation, following weeks of tensions and clashes in the contested Jerusalem, was sparked on Monday evening when Hamas – the Islamist group that rules inside Gaza – fired a barrage of missiles towards Jerusalem.   

Then on Tuesday afternoon, former U.S. President Donald Trump posted to his website, saying that America ‘will always strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself’ as he criticised President Joe Biden over the growing crisis. 

Earlier, the White House had said Biden was being briefed on the escalating situation.    

Israel’s Iron Dome defence system continued to struggle with the volume of rockets being fired from Gaza on Tuesday evening, after an Israeli air strike caused a 13-storey residential building to collapse in Gaza City.

And the mayor of the Israeli city of Lod called for army back-up to help secure the area, saying ‘civil war’ was breaking out as residents clashed following the funeral of an Arab man killed yesterday by a Jewish local.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier ‘deplored’ the deaths of the two women in Israel, adding that the country’s military would ‘further increase both the intensity and the rate’ of its own air strikes against Gaza.

‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said, before the announcement of the third woman’s death in Israel. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’ 

The cross-border violence has been fuelled by Israel’s evictions of Muslim communities living in east Jerusalem which led to angry riots breaking out on Temple Mount over the weekend, with hundreds left injured on Monday as riot police shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas at protesters. 

Residents of the collapsed residential block and the surrounding area had been warned to evacuate the area around an hour before the air strike, according to witnesses, and there were no reports of casualties two hours after it collapsed.

Shortly after the attack, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group said they would respond by firing rockets at Tel Aviv, which they did.

Air raid sirens and explosions were heard around the city, and the skies were lit up by the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles launched towards the incoming rockets.

Pedestrians ran for shelter, and diners streamed out of Tel Aviv restaurants while others flattened themselves on pavements as the sirens sounded.

The Israel Airports Authority said it had halted take-offs at Tel Aviv airport ‘to allow defence of the nation’s skies’. Video broadcast on Israeli Channel 12 television showed interceptor missiles rising above the runways.

‘We are now carrying out our promise,’ Hamas’s armed wing said. ‘The Qassam Brigades are launching their biggest rocket strike against Tel Aviv and its suburbs, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of residential towers.’  

The sound of the outgoing rockets could be heard in Gaza. As the rockets rose into the skies, mosques across Gaza blared with chants of ‘God is great,’ ‘victory to Islam’ and ‘resistance.’

One rocket struck a bus in the central city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv. Medics said three people, including a five-year-old girl, were wounded and the bus went up in flames.

Israel said it had sent 80 jets to bomb Gaza, and dispatched infantry and armour to reinforce the tanks already gathered on the border, evoking memories of the last ground incursion into Gaza to stop rocket attacks, in 2014.

More than 2,100 Gazans were killed in the seven-week war that followed, according to the Gaza health ministry, along with 73 Israelis, and thousands of homes in Gaza were razed.