Over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the past three weeks by Israeli attacks on Gaza including some 300 children - and attacks have included those on known UN installations where people were sheltering - with a top UN official today calling for war crime investigation into the shelling of a school. In the same time around 13 Israelis have also died, four of them killed by its own army.

So it was hardly surprising that Trafalgar Square was fairly full for today's rally against the Israeli attacks, with perhaps 5-10,000 people - although this was only a small fraction of the number at last week's national demonstration.

A few hours after the demonstration, news was released that Israel was to announce a ceasefire on its own terms. Unfortunately we can be sure that these terms will mean no justice for Palestine, welcome though what seems likely to be a temporary respite in the killings may be.

As I arrived - and as on so many occasions in this Square - Tony Benn was being announced and rightly given a huge welcome. One of the greatest political figures of the last 50 years, it's a national tragedy that while he has so often been right on major issues, governments have seldom if ever followed his lead.

Most of those attending listened to all the speakers with respect and applauded enthusiastically, though a small section of the crown attracted rather more than its share of press attention with its noisy animation and gestures such as burning Israeli flags and tearing up placards carrying pictures og George Bush (what will we do after Obama takes over next week?)

As well as political speeches from a wide range of speakers there were two contributions that particularly moved me. One was a very assured speech by an 11 year old Palestine girl, now living in Manchester, and another was the Palestinian singer Reem Kelani (who also grew up in Manchester) who led the crowd in singing a Palestinian song, written in the 1930s but since then appropriated by others, that she wants to reclaim for Palestine.

On the stone steps behind the speakers were a group of children all dressed in white robes marked with bloody red hand prints, keeping our minds on the children slaughtered in Gaza. After Kelani had sung, they came down from the plinth and went with a deputation to take a letter from the rally to Downing St, calling for an immediate ceasefire and reparations for the war damage inflicted by the Israeli attacks.

I went with them down Whitehall to Downing St, where police led them into a pen close to the gates. While a delegation of six, including Diane Abbott MP, Betty Hunter of the PSC and Lindsay German of Stop the War, took the letter into Downing St, the children posed for pictures, at first standing, and then lying on the ground as if the innocent victims of an Israeli attack; but these children were just playing dead.

More pictures on My London Diary shortly:  http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2009/01/jan.htm#slaughter