CAMPAIGNERS have continued calls in Carlisle's city centre for a ceasefire in the Middle East, coinciding with World Freedom Day. 

This day was established to align with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Palestine Solidarity Group Carlisle & District sought to highlight the restrictions people live under in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), hoping to see an end to the walls and siege in these areas.

Fiona Goldie, a spokesperson for the group, said: "Carlisle, as a border city, is no stranger to conflict and was often besieged itself, historically.

"There was huge historic animosity between England and Scotland—our Town Hall is evidence that we didn’t even give them the time of day.

"It must have seemed extremely unlikely at the time that the two people would ever be able to live together in peace, but they did.

"We see this, and the peace that broke out in Germany in 1989, as hope that we can build peaceful solutions to 21st-century conflicts too."

The group also marked the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, highlighting that environmental destruction caused by war, which is rarely covered, but is a major driver of famine and refugees. 

“We can see the enormous plumes of rising smoke and the devastation of whole neighbourhoods on the news daily.

"However, the carbon cost of war is not included in a country’s output calculations, so we have no real statistics on how devastating an impact bombing has on the planet.

"Huge volumes of greenhouse gases heat the atmosphere with every explosion. Other pollutants, including heavy metals such as cadmium, copper and lead, plus depleted uranium and white phosphorous are emitted, leaching into the water systems and causing toxicity.

"The heat from a ‘bunker-busting’ bombing reaches 2000 degrees- not just  a scorched earth policy, as the saying goes, but a 'destroyed earth' reality. All life forms are annihilated at such temperatures, nutrients incinerated- soil is rendered infertile and blown away as dust into the Mediterranean. Conflict is damaging on levels that we rarely consider, and these impacts affect us all," she said. 

The campaigners will continue to highlight all aspects of the conflict at their weekly vigils in the city centre each Saturday from 1pm to 2pm.

On November 16, they will hold a further protest outside Barclays Bank on English Street from 12pm.