Pro-Palestinian activists have targeted a Picasso painting at the National Gallery in protest over arms sales to Israel.

Two protesters from the group Youth Demand plastered a photograph of a Gazan mother and her child over the 1901 work Motherhood, which sold for $24.8 million in 1988.

The pair also poured red paint on the floor of the gallery.

The photograph, taken by Ali Jadallah, a Palestinian photojournalist, shows a mother cradling her child amidst the rubble in the aftermath of an Israeli strike.