Palestine campaigners stage protest in Brighton’s Churchill Square

The group were in the centre of the shopping complex in Brighton this afternoon.

Stood on the balconies above the ground floor, they hung Palestine flags and banners and chanted “ceasefire now”.

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “While you are shopping, bombs are dropping.

“Evading security, 150 people are holding a mass action inside Brighton’s Churchill Square shopping centre.”

The group were dropping leaflets from the balconies.

Palestine supporters have held regular protests in Brighton and London since Israel launched its war against Hamas.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, and saw about 250 others taken hostage from the country’s south.

Health authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza say Israel’s offensive has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

The offensive, one of the most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has pulverized much of territory and displaced more than 80 per cent of its population of 2.3 million people.

An Israeli blockade that allows only a trickle of aid into Gaza has led to widespread hunger and outbreaks of disease, United Nations officials have said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the only way to secure the hostages’ return is by crushing Hamas through military means.

Churchill Square has been contacted for comment.