Thousands march in Rome to protest 'complicity' on Gaza war

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday to protest the war in Gaza, in a rally called by opposition parties denouncing the government's alleged “complicity” in the conflict.

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“Stop the massacre, stop complicity!” read a wide banner held by protestors at the start of the march, amid a sea of red, white and green Palestinian flags, peace flags and “Free Palestine” signs.

The peaceful protest attracted a massive crowd estimated by organisers at 300,000 people. Police later said those estimates were “largely confirmed,” according to Italian news agency AGI.

It made its way from Rome's central Piazza Vittorio to San Giovanni, where speakers took to a stage to urge an end to the violence and denounce what some called the silence of the far-right Italian government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, called the turnout “an enormous popular response” in opposition to the war.

Italy's Five Star Movement and the Greens-Left Alliance were also behind the protest.

The demonstration was “to say enough to the massacre of Palestinians, to say enough to the crimes of Netanyahu's far-right government” and to show the world “another Italy”, Schlein told journalists.