European protesters block traffic, vandalise shops after Gaza aid flotilla blocked

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BARCELONA/ROME (Reuters) -Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Europe on Thursday blocked traffic and vandalised shops and restaurants after Israeli forces intercepted a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla.

Israel faced international condemnation after armed Israeli soldiers boarded around 40 ships that were attempting to break a naval blockade to deliver aid to the Palestinian enclave, arresting more than 400 foreign activists including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.

In Barcelona, protesters smashed or spray-painted anti-Israel slogans on windows of stores and restaurants including coffee chain Starbucks, hamburger franchise Burger King and supermarket chain Carrefour, accusing them of complicity in Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip.

“These protests are the only thing we can do,” said Akram Azahomaras, who was among the marchers but said vandalism of stores was counterproductive.

“But doing it like this, I don’t think it’s right,” she added. “We need to do it peacefully, with our words, not with actions.”

In Italy, students occupied universities, including Milan’s Statale and Rome’s La Sapienza, and blocked access to Bologna’s university using car tyres, video footage showed.     In Turin, hundreds of people blocked traffic on the city’s ring road, according to news agency reports.     Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others were due to take part in a flash mob in Rome, shining flashlights and mobile phone lights and reading out the names of 1,677 health workers killed in Gaza, organisers said.      Italian unions have called for a general strike in support of the Gaza aid flotilla, with more than 100 marches or rallies expected across the country.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto criticized the disruption caused by some of the protesters.

“Does anyone really believe that blocking a station, an airport, a motorway or destroying a shop in Italy will bring relief to the Palestinian people?” he wrote on X.

Across Europe, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Dublin, Paris, Berlin and Geneva to condemn Israel’s interception of the flotilla. Rallies also took place in Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Karachi.

In Istanbul, a crowd gathered outside the Israeli embassy holding aloft banners with slogans such as “Israel is massacring humanity, not Gaza / Do not be silent, do not sit, stand up.”

The war in Gaza has killed more than 66,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities.

Israel began its offensive after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken as hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

(Reporting by Miguel Gutierrez in Barcelona, Alvise Armellini in Rome; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)