Four people were detained for waving the Palestinian flag during a Cricket World Cup match between Pakistan and Bangladesh at the Eden Gardens stadium in West Bengal’s Kolkata on Tuesday, PTI reported.

While two of those detained are residents of Jharkhand, the other two come from the Ekbalpore and Howrah areas of Kolkata. They were released around midnight, India Today reported.

The four persons were protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The flag was waved when Bangladesh was batting during the first innings of the match.

“I heard that the war is going on,” India Today quoted one of the persons, identified as Shehnaz, as saying. “Everyone said that it must be stopped. We started protesting against [the war] by waving the flag of Palestine. We did not expect that there would be a controversy while waving the flag. We also did not expect that photos and videos would go viral.”

Israel declared war on Gaza after a multi-pronged attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,400 Israelis. Incessant air strikes by Israel since then have killed over 8,500 people in Gaza and injured more than 21,500. In the West Bank, 127 Palestinians have been killed.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military launched multiple air strikes on a refugee camp near Gaza city, saying that it is targeting Hamas infrastructure “that had taken over civilian buildings”.

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