Swedish activist Greta Thunberg attended a rally in support of climate change and Palestinians in Milan on Friday. More than 1,000 people, many of them teenagers, joined a peaceful march in this northern Italian city organized by Fridays For Future, a climate change movement that Thunberg helped found. Wearing a kufiya - a traditional scarf symbolizing the Palestinian struggle against Israel - Thunberg walked at the front of the procession, while other protesters waved flags, held banners and danced to music.

“Palestinians have lived under the suffocating oppression of the apartheid regime for decades, and over the past year, the world has abandoned Palestine once again as Israel broadcast live the genocide,” the 21-year-old man said in his speech. According to the AFP news agency, based on official Israeli figures, militants took 251 people hostage in an attack that killed 1,206 people, most of them civilians. Israel's retaliatory military offensive in the Gaza Strip killed more than 42,000 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled territory. The United Nations has recognized the figures as reliable.

Thunberg drew a link between global warming and the arms industry. “The fight for climate justice is a fight against the fossil fuel industry, but also against the war industry, militarization and over-extraction of natural resources,” she said. German police on Tuesday shut down a pro-Palestinian protest camp where Thunberg was invited after a rally she attended in Berlin on Monday - the anniversary of the Hamas attack - ended in clashes with police. She accused Germany of “silencing and threatening activists”. The Milan march was part of the “national strike for climate”, a series of protests organized by Fridays For Future across Italy. “Demonstrations are the only weapon we have against the injustice we suffer,” said 17-year-old protester Sofia Parisi.