ROME, Nov.27,2017-- Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Italian capital on Sunday to raise the public awareness against domestic violence.

In a rally marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is observed worldwide on Nov. 25 since its inception in 1999, an estimated 150,000 people gathered near the central railway station in Rome, and then marched through the city. Other similar rallies were held across Italy to mark the Day.

Violence against women has been an unrelenting plague in Italy and other European countries, despite increasing efforts by both public institutions and women's groups to boost awareness and prevention.

Some 114 women were killed in the first 10 months of 2017, about a woman killed every 2.6 days, according to the latest report released by Italy's Economic and Social Research Institute EURES.

They had been 116 in the same period of 2016, and 150 throughout the whole last year. The number of "femicides," a term defined when the murder of a woman is perpetrated by a male partner or a male relative, had increased by 5.6 percent in 2016 against 2015, the EURES report said.

Statistics by the Italian police also showed that some 71.9 percent of all murders targeting a woman in the last 10 years were carried out by a father, brother, husband or another male relative.

On Saturday, Italian President Sergio Mattarella also spoke out against domestic and gender violence, especially pointing at sexual violence, which he said "does not concern women only, but all of us, because it is a most serious violation of human rights."

Mattarella made his remarks after meeting a delegation of women led by the speaker of Italy's Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini at the Quirinale presidential palace.

"Denouncing the problem is not enough: we need to root out the sources of the problem, and remove the conditions that create (female) subjugation and violence," Mattarella said in a statement.