Thousands of people gathered across Manhattan on Monday to commemorate the first anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with groups on both sides of the conflict expressing their collective grief and outrage over the past year of war.

A demonstration that began in Lower Manhattan in the afternoon drew a large crowd. Several hundred people, led by organizers from the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, assembled around a huge Palestinian flag that they had unfurled on the street outside the New York Stock Exchange, where they prayed and then chanted, “Israel bombs, U.S.A. pays, how many kids did you kill today?” Nearby, a smaller group of counterprotesters waved Israeli flags and shouted, “Death to Hamas.”

The crowd grew as it marched north, blocking streets. Later, in Union Square, a separate event organized by left-leaning Jewish groups was held to mourn the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese victims of the past year.

“I’m protesting one year of killing human beings who don’t deserve to die,” said Mir Ali, 67, of Staten Island, who was among the protesters in Lower Manhattan. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, many of them children, according to local health officials.

Several of New York’s highest-ranking elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, appeared at another event in Central Park memorializing the victims of the attacks on Oct. 7, when officials say 1,200 people who were killed and roughly another 250 were taken hostage.

During emotional remarks by the parents of 22-year-old Omer Neutra, who is being held by Hamas, the crowd of more than a thousand, many waving Israeli flags or draping them around their shoulders, broke into the rallying cry that has been repeated throughout the past year: “Bring them home.”

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