Pro-Palestine protesters sparked rush-hour chaos in Glasgow as they marched on a busy train station at the height of rush hour. The demonstrators waved banners and chanted “stop the genocide” as workers tried to travel home from work through Glasgow Central Station on Wedesday. The crowd, numbering over 100 passionate protestors, took over the station concourse for about twenty minutes before moving onto Renfield Street, eventually making their way to a shopping centre in the port Scottish city.

They cried “Free Palestine” and “Resistance is justified when Palestine is occupied” as they stomped through the streets waving Palestinian and Lebanese flags. An onlooker said the group also temporarily brought traffic to a standstill on a nearby street as they streamed into the station.

The latest protest was triggered by fresh Israeli strikes in Gaza following a ceasefire declared on January 19, during which at least 436 lives have been lost since just yesterday, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee claimed responsibility for the demonstration on Instagram in a statement that accused Israel of “resuming the slaughter of civilians in Gaza”.

Protests against the war in the Middle East have broken out in cities across the UK since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023. Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in London last week calling for an end to “Israel’s siege of Gaza”, while a counter-protest, organised by the group Stop the Hate also assembled in the city centre.

Israel confirmed on Wednesday that it had launched a “limited ground operation” in northern Gaza to retake part of a corridor in the territory.

The country’s defence minisiter Israel Katz warned that plans to step up the attacks following a two-month ceasefire would involve “an intensity that you have not yet seen”, adding that the onslaught would only become more fierce unless the dozens of hostages who have been held for over 17 months were freed.

The resumption of airstrikes by Israel on Tuesday risks plunging the region back into a state of all-out war, and comes just weeks after the end of the first phase of a ceasefire, during which Israel and Gaza exchanged hostages and were due to negotiate an extended truce, eventually resulting in an end to the conflict.