Cuba Condemns Israel's Killings of Palestinians
Prensa Latina | Thursday, 5 April 2018 | Click here for original article
Cuba has condemned Israel's killings of unarmed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where brutal repression by the Israeli Army left 18 dead over the weekend and over 1,400 wounded.
The killing continued on Tuesday when a Palestinian from Deir Al Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, was shot dead during a demonstrations held in the eastern area of the Bureij refugee camp. Ahmad Arafeh, 25, was fatally injured in his chest with real bullets. 'We expressed the strongest condemnation to the new and criminal aggression of the Israeli Army against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,' stressed the director general of the Cuban Foreign Ministry Bilateral Affairs Office Emilio Lozada.
It's a brutal action amounting to a serious and flagrant violation of the UN Chapter and the International Human Rights, and it fans up tensions in the region that pushes away the possibility of any effort towards resuming peace talks between Palestinians and Israelies, Lozada added.
'We call again on all the States, international bodies, the UN Security Council and the international community to jointly demand from Israel the immediate halt of this aggression and its expansionist and colonizing policies,' the official said.
Lozada further underlined Cuba's stance of supporting a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis based on two States that would grant Palestinians the right to free determination and have an independent and sovereign country with its capital in Western Jerusalem and borders previous to 1967.
Since last Friday Palestinians have been staging Land Day demonstrations that have been brutally repressed by Israeli soldiers.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported last Sunday that on Friday and Saturday 15 Palestinians were killed (a figure that currently rose to 18 fatalities) and 4,779 Palestinians were treated in hospitals for various injuries.
According to a statement issued by the ministry, out of that figure, 805 people were injured by shots with real bullets, 425 were hurt for breathing tear gas, 154 were hit by rubber bullets and 95 were suffered various injuries. (Prensa Latina)
