ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will leave for the United States later in the day to attend an emergency session on Palestine called by the United Nations General Assembly in the wake of soaring tensions in Gaza that has left over 200 people dead.
The foreign minister will lead the lead Pakistani delegation at the special session which is likely to be held on Thursday. FM Qureshi will go to New York via Turkey.
According to the sources, FM Qureshi and the Turkish foreign minister will head to New York together from Ankara, the Turkish capital.
READ MORE: Israeli warplanes stage more heavy strikes across Gaza City
Earlier in the day, Qureshi received Palestine envoy to Pakistan Ahmed Jawad Rabaei. During the meeting, he condemned violence by the Israeli forces against worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also condemned the Israeli military’s indiscriminate attacks killing more than 140 Palestinians, including 39 children and 22 women.
On Sunday, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned Israeli violence in Palestinian territories and called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to take swift action to stop the aggression. The global Muslim body also warned against the dangers of such deliberate provocations if they continued.
An OIC Executive Committee virtual open-ended extraordinary meeting on Israeli aggression adopted a resolution that said it “underscores the responsibility of the Security Council to act swiftly to end the Israeli occupation’s barbaric attacks on the Palestinian people”.
“Meeting resolution clearly and particularly warned about dangerous consequences of Israel’s deliberate inflammation of religious sensibilities and provocation of Palestinians and the Islamic Ummah,” a statement by OIC shared on Twitter after the meeting said.
The OIC tweet said that it had decided to “renew its rejection and condemnation of the ongoing Israeli settlement, colonisation of, and establishment of an apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
