Thousands of demonstrators join banned pro-Palestinian march in Paris

Thousands of demonstrators protested in Paris on Saturday in a banned march in "support of the Palestinian people" AFP correspondents saw.

A large contingent of police blocked marchers in a central part of the capital.

Among the protesters were elected officials wearing tricolor scarves, including a green MP and a far-left lawmaker.

"(The need for) a ceasefire is urgent, to stop killing women, children and men," said the deputy mayor of the central town of Corbeil-Essonnes, Elsa Toure.

The devastating conflict erupted after Hamas militants carried out a shock cross-border attack on Israel on October 7 that left 1,400 people dead, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials.

The Islamist group has also taken some 229 people to the Gaza Strip as captives, according to the army.

In retaliatory Israeli strikes, more than 7,700 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including some 3,500 children, according to the territory's health ministry.

In Paris, Samia Orosemane, a comedian, carried a sign emblazoned with the words: "Where has our humanity gone?"

"It is not right that a ceasefire has not been called, that thousands of civilians are dying and no one is saying anything," she said.

She also complained that "in the country of human rights, we are prevented from protesting," she told AFP.

An administrative court on Saturday upheld the ban on the demonstration, citing "the serious risk of disturbing public order" amid "heightened tensions linked to the events in the Gaza Strip with a rise in anti-Semitic acts in France".