WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Around 100 pro-Palestine supporters blocked the four gates of Colt Manufacturing in West Hartford Thursday morning.
The group said they were there to protest the 24,000 guns being sold to Israel amidst the war between Israel and Hamas.
The Biden administration recently approved the sale to the Israeli Defense Force. Protest leaders said more than half of those guns are coming from Colt Manufacturing, many of which have already been sent out while the others will soon follow.
Protesters at the gates of Colt said they are protesting the sale—they say they think Connecticut should not participate in providing weapons that may be used to kill their friends, family, and innocent civilians currently still in Gaza.
"It's complicit in the genocide going on in Gaza as well as the killings the vigilante killings in the West Bank," one pro-Palestine supporter said. "We are here to say Connecticut doesn't stand for this.”
Colt Manufacturing declined to comment Thursday morning after FOX61 reached out.
The monthlong conflict in Gaza followed Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in Israel in which militants killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took 242 hostages. Deaths in Gaza under Israeli bombardment have soared past 10,000, alienating international governments that had endorsed Israel's right of self-defense. Israel blames Hamas for the heavy death toll, accusing the group of using civilians as human shields.
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