Pro-Palestine march: Police braced as hundreds of thousands of protesters to descend on London

A national two-minute silence will occur at 11am.

The Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall will be attended by the King and Queen and other members of the royal family.

Remembrance Sunday events will take place at the Cenotaph in Westminster the following day.

The coalition of groups behind the march are the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Trade unions, political groups such as the Socialist Worker and politicians including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn say they will be attending.

Stop the War has insisted that the focus of the march is on stopping the killing in Gaza.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign says the UK Government, through its “endorsement” of Israel, has been rendered “complicit” in the deaths of people in Gaza.

Organisers predict half a million people will gather in the capital, with police also bracing for huge numbers.

They believe it could be the “biggest demonstration” over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that the time had come for action over the conflict in Gaza rather than talk as he headed to Saudi Arabia to attend a summit on the war between Israel and Hamas militants.

“Gaza is not an arena for words. It should be for action,” Raisi said at Tehran airport before departing for the summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh.

“Today, the unity of the Islamic countries is very important,” he added.

It is the first visit to Saudi Arabia by an Iranian head of state since Tehran and Riyadh ended years of hostility under a China-brokered deal in March.

“The summit will send a strong message to warmongers in the region and result in the cessation of war crimes in Palestine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who is accompanying Raisi, was quoted as saying by the Padolat government website.

“America says it doesn’t want an expansion of the war and has sent messages to Iran and several countries [to this effect]. But these statements are not consistent with America’s actions,” Raisi said in the televised comments at Tehran airport.

“The war machine in Gaza is in the hands of America, which is preventing a ceasefire in Gaza and expanding the war. The world must see the true face of America,” Raisi said.

This video posted by Gaza’s Advocacy Officer in Gaza shows scenes from Al-Shifa hospital on Friday night as it was subjected to ceaseless bombardment.

The march’s route will take activists from the Marble Arch corner of Hyde Park at approximately 12pm on Saturday, head south through the capital down the Vauxhall Bridge Road and cross the River Thames en route to the US Embassy on Nine Elms Lane in opposition to US president Joe Biden’s unwavering support for the Israeli military’s response to the Hamas attacks.

Bel Trew visits villages in the occupied West Bank and hears harrowing tales of settler violence in which Palestinian families describe being forced from their homes – in what human rights groups say is the single biggest land grab since Israel captured the region in 1967:

The man in Israeli military uniform sliced off Mohamed’s clothes with a knife, urinated on him, and then, after relentlessly beating him, tried to rape him with a stick. He details the assault that took place in the village of Wadi al-Siq, about 20 miles northeast of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The death toll from Hamas’s brutal attack on 7 October had been revised to around 1,200, down from a previous government estimate of 1,400, Israel’s foreign ministry has said.

“Around 1,200 is the official number of victims of the October 7 massacre,” spokesperson Lior Haiat said in a statement.

The figure was updated on Thursday, Mr Haiat said. He did not provide a reason for the revision.

The death count, which includes foreigners, “is not a final number. It [is] an updated estimate. It might change when [they] identify all the bodies,” Mr Haiat said.

The executive director of Israeli media advocacy group HonestReporting has said he accepts as “adequate” denials by four major media organisations that they had no previous knowledge of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, adding he was “so relieved”.

Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times issued adamant denials after HonestReporting published an article on Thursday questioning whether Palestinian photojournalists had tipped off the four outlets, which had used their images.

HonestReporting’s Gil Hoffman told Reuters his organisation had not claimed to know that there had been any prior knowledge by the news groups of the Hamas attack.

“I was so relieved when all four of the media organisations said they didn’t have prior knowledge,” Mr Hoffman said. “We raised questions, we didn’t give answers,” he added. “I still very much think that the questions were legitimate and the answers were adequate from the media organisations themselves.”

The Canadian wing of Doctors Without Borders said it had lost contact with its medical staff at the Al Shifa hospital following an air strike.

“We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside Al Shifa hospital. We are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff,” the non-profit wrote in a post on X.

“Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move, there are caretakers still inside the facility.

“We urgently reiterate our calls to stop the attacks against hospitals and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.”

Journalist Ash Sarkar said she and her friends were forced out of a pub by men who were threatening them with violence for wearing a Palestinian scarf and carrying a Palestinian flag.

“Just been forced out of a pub by men threatening me and my friends with violence, and hurling abuse,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Staff were very apologetic about it, but the fact is the media and politicians have whipped up a frenzy of hate.”

She said one of the men threatening them had been “waving around a copy of the Evening Standard which had an image of a poppy at odds with a Palestinian flag”.

“When he saw my friends, he accused them of spitting in the face of people who fought for this country,” she said.“

Others joined in. There was also a distinct undertone of racism,” she added.