Thousands of protesters and strikers calling for solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets in Italy on Monday (September 22, 2025), with some storming Milan’s central train station.

Italy’s grassroots unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of people ranging from schoolteachers to metalworkers, called for a 24-hour general strike in both public and private sectors, including public transportation, trains, schools and ports.

The strike caused disruptions across the country, with long delays for national trains and limited public transport in major cities, including Rome.

In Milan, tension escalated when dozens of protesters dressed in black and armed with batons tried to smash the main entrance of the city’s central train station, throwing smoke bombs, bottles and stones at police, who responded with pepper spray. In Bologna, police used water cannons to disperse a crowd of demonstrators who blocked a highway.

The transit of goods was slowed or partially blocked by workers’ sit-ins and rallies in Italy’s main ports of Genoa and Livorno. More than 20,000 people gathered in front of Rome’s central station to protest the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Unions and student organizations denounced “the inertia of the Italian and EU governments.”

“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” said Walter Montagnoli, national secretary of the CUB union, who joined a march in Milan.

“It’s not through violence, by attacking security forces, blocking highways, stations and ports that we help the Palestinian civil population,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X.

The Italian government headed by conservative Premier Giorgia Meloni, a close Israeli ally in the EU, has more recently adopted a harsher tone on Israeli policies as domestic pressure mounted over the war. Italy, however, is not among the countries, including France, that will formally recognize a Palestinian state at this week’s U.N. General Assembly.

The creation of a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza has long been seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict, which began more than a century before Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza. In the attack, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. There are still 48 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom Israel believes 20 are still alive.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive over the past 23 months has killed more than 65,100 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, destroyed vast areas of the strip, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts saying Gaza City is experiencing famine.

The Ministry is under the Hamas-run government. U.N. agencies and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties. It does not say how many of those killed were civilians or combatants.

Published – September 22, 2025 09:02 pm IST

Men walk through the rubble at the site of an Israeli airstrike targeting the Ouzai neighborhood near Beirut International Airport in the city’s southern suburbs on November 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Transport Minister said on Thursday (November 7, 2024) the country’s only international airport was operating normally after Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, including one in an area near the hub. 

Minister Ali Hamie told AFP that planes were taking off and landing without any issue.

A heater factory next to the airport’s perimeter wall had been badly damaged in a strike, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Israel has been at war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border.

The strike near the airport came after Hezbollah announced on Wednesday (November 6, 2024) that it had targeted a military base close to Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s main international transport hub.

The overnight strike in Beirut caused “minor damage” to some buildings but “not inside the terminal building”, an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

He said the strike had affected a maintenance building belonging to a subsidiary of Middle East Airlines, Lebanon’s national carrier and practically the only airline still operating flights there.

Abu Elie, a taxi driver, was at the airport when the strikes hit. “The entire car park shook. People were carrying their luggage on their shoulders and running,” he said. “When I made it to the street, there was so much smoke I had to turn the headlights on.”

The Israeli army had earlier issued an evacuation order for four neighbourhoods in southern Beirut, including a site near the airport.

“Once they sent warnings, we got in the car and fled,” Beirut resident Malak Okail told AFP.

“It has become repetitive,” said Ramzi Zaitar, another resident. “We’ve had to flee our homes several times. Sometimes we sleep in the car,” he added. 

“Death has become a matter of luck. We can either die or survive,” he said.

Since September 23, 2024, more than 2,600 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, according to Health Minister Firass Abiad.