A reading of the names of children killed in Gaza lasts over 18 hours

A vig­il tak­ing place yes­ter­day out­side the UK’s Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, where the names of the 15,613 chil­dren known to have been killed in Gaza were read aloud, fin­ished after last­ing over 18 hours.

It began at 9am on Thurs­day, May 29, and last­ed until 2:30am on Fri­day, May 30, with the likes of Chris O’Dowd, Steve Coogan, Dawn O’Porter, Nadia Sawal­ha, Mis­an Har­ri­man and Ncu­ti Gat­wa tak­ing part in read­ing them non-stop.

The vig­il was organ­ised by UK based char­i­ty Choose Love, who pro­vide aid and advo­ca­cy for refugees around the world. Mem­bers of the group held up a ban­ner, which read: ​“GAZA: ACTIONS NOT WORDS”, with names of chil­dren killed under the age of one print­ed on it.

• Read next: Sakir Khader’s wrench­ing, resilient por­trait of Pales­tin­ian life

In an Insta­gram post, Choose Love wrote: ​“In the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing, we read the last of the list of 15,613 names of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren known to be killed in Gaza.

“15,613 names. Over 18 hours,” it con­tin­ued. ​“Every sin­gle one of those names was someone’s universe.”

Choose Love have also head­ed up an open let­ter to the British Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer, call­ing upon the UK to end com­plic­i­ty in the hor­rors in Gaza now, which has been signed by over 300 cul­tur­al fig­ures and musi­cians includ­ing Dua Lipa, Wretch 32, Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Mas­sive Attack, Gary Linek­er and more.

• Read next: Ples­tia Alaqad: ​“Jour­nal­ists should focus on human­is­ing peo­ple”

Josie Naughton, the CEO and co-founder of Choose Love said: ​“Words won’t save the lives of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren as they are being killed, words won’t fill their emp­ty stomachs. 

“We need action from Keir Starmer now. That means stop­ping all arms sales and licens­es, mak­ing sure that legit­i­mate human­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tions can reach peo­ple in Gaza. It means doing every­thing pos­si­ble to make these hor­rors end,” she continued.

“Action is a choice, just as inac­tion is one. His­to­ry will remem­ber what we did in this moment. We are beg­ging the Prime Min­is­ter to make the right choice.”

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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