AROUND 70 people gathered in Dumfries town centre on Saturday afternoon to remember the tens of thousands of children killed by Israel in Gaza.
Organiser Anne Bryce, from Kirkcudbright, said the number of children killed or injured in Gaza is more than the total number of children in the whole of Dumfries and Galloway.
Bryce, to put it into perspective, said the children had been targeted in an area 25 miles long and between 3 miles and 8 miles wide, an area smaller than the Isle of Arran and a quarter the size of London.
An estimated 18,000 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, and another 30,000 children have been injured. In 2022, there were approximately 22,096 children aged 0 to 15 years living in Dumfries and Galloway.
Organised by members of Dumfries and Galloway Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Galloway Friends of Medical Aid for Palestinians, the hour-long gathering saw dozens of children’s shoes placed on the ground to remind participants and passers-by of the children killed by bullets, bombs, in missile strikes and increasingly by starvation and lack of basic medical care.
Songs and poems were performed, and a number of questions asked by children in Gaza and gathered by medical and other support staff were read out.
Participants in the event struggled to contain their emotions as they read out the names of some of the dead children, in groups from age zero to fifteen, before a minute’s silence was observed.
The Dumfries vigils, calling for an end to the conflict, have been taking place every Saturday at 2pm since October 2023.
Organisers said it will continue until a lasting ceasefire or long-term solution is achieved, and urged people to come along and lend their support.
