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Crowds Gather for London Pro-Palestinian Rally as Police Brace for Clashes

Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza -REUTERS/Hannah McKay Acquire Licensing Rights
Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza -REUTERS/Hannah McKay Acquire Licensing Rights
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Crowds Gather for London Pro-Palestinian Rally as Police Brace for Clashes

Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza -REUTERS/Hannah McKay Acquire Licensing Rights
Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza -REUTERS/Hannah McKay Acquire Licensing Rights

Protesters gathered in central London on Saturday ahead of a pro-Palestinian march expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people, with police launching a major operation due to fears of clashes on the day of remembrance for war veterans.

The "National March for Palestine", due to start after 1200 GMT, is the latest in a series of rallies in the British capital to show support for the Palestinians since Israel launched an air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip following the Hamas group's Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel.

Government ministers had called for Saturday's march to be cancelled because it falls on Armistice Day, which marks the end of World War One and commemorates those killed in military action.

About a mile away from the start of the march, about 1,000 people lined the streets to watch the remembrance events at the Cenotaph war memorial. Among the crowd, some right-wing counter-protesters opposed to the pro-Palestinian march chanted messages including "We want our country back".

Television pictures showed small scuffles breaking out between the police and right-wing protesters near the Cenotaph.

Police have said almost 2,000 officers will be on duty, vowing to crack down on any disorder caused either by those involved in the march or the counter-protest. An unprecedented 24-hour police guard at the Cenotaph has been in place since Thursday.

"The policing operation this weekend is huge," Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said on Friday, saying it would be "challenging and tense".

Citing worries over planned demonstrations at three railway stations in central London, transport police said protests at Waterloo, Victoria and Charing Cross would be banned until 2300 GMT.

Organizers from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) have said the march will steer clear of the Cenotaph memorial near the Downing Street office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and end at the US Embassy about two miles (3 km) away.

While previous PSC marches have been generally peaceful, there have been more than 100 arrests for offences including showing support for Hamas, which is banned as a terrorist organization in Britain, or holding placards with offensive slogans.

There has been strong support and sympathy for Israel from Western governments, including Britain's, and many citizens over the Hamas attacks. But the Israeli response has also prompted anger, with weekly protests in London demanding a ceasefire.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the minister in charge of policing, has courted controversy by calling the protesters "hate marchers", and Sunak has come under pressure from his own lawmakers to sack her after she accused the police of double standards over how they treated "pro-Palestinian mobs".

DAC Taylor said police were hoping to prevent trouble, but clashes were likely.

"There will be times this weekend where you see pockets of confrontation, despite the conditions and everything that I've put in place to manage that," he said.

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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.