MORE than 2,000 people brought Edinburgh to a halt on Saturday with a powerful demonstration of solidarity for Gaza.

The 90-minute march from the Mound to the first minister’s residence at Bute House stopped for a two-minute silence in a packed Princes Street, where the city’s festival-goers showed strong support.

Demonstrators each held a card bearing the name of one of the 2,000 people — 400 of them children — who have been killed in the current Israeli assault.

Albie O’Neill of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demanded “the isolation of Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions” to force them to stop the “slaughter of innocents” in Gaza.

Amal Azzudin, one of the Glasgow Girls group which won praise for its campaigns in support of asylum seekers, said: “We are marching for three things — the children, the children, the children.”

National Union of Students Scotland president Gordon Maloney declared that as a Jewish man, “nothing Israel does is in my name.”

Dundee TUC secretary Mike Arnott told the rally his city council was “proudly flying the Palestinian flag” in solidarity.

“We resolve that no company which operates in the occupied territories will operate here unchallenged, none who profit from complicity with Israel will profit here unchallenged, and no broadcaster or politician who acts as an apologist for zionist murder will go unchallenged,” he said.

Other speakers at the demonstration included Green MSP Alison Johnstone and representatives from Scottish Jews for a Just Peace and Stop the War Coalition.

* In a statement sent to the rally, Humza Yousaf MSP, Scottish government minister for external affairs, called on the UK to introduce an immediate arms embargo to Israel and said that the world must do more to demand a lifting of the illegal blockade of Gaza.