The Brazilian president has condemned Israel’s latest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, which left scores of civilians dead, calling for global action to stop the regime’s massacres in the besieged territory.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the remarks on Sunday in reaction to an Israeli attack on a camp for the displaced people in southern Gaza, which killed at least 90 people and injured 300 more, and also a regime strike on a mosque at al-Shati refugee camp in the territory's north that killed 20 civilians. Another Israeli strike on Sunday killed 15 people at a school sheltering those displaced by the war.
"The most recent bombings in the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent people, are unacceptable," said a statement issued by Lula's office.
Urging the world not to remain silent in the face of Israel's deadly strikes on Palestinians in Gaza, the Brazilian president added, “It is appalling that they continue to collectively punish the Palestinian people.”
“Tens of thousands [of Palestinians] have already died in successive [Israeli] attacks since last year, many of them in delimited humanitarian zones that should be protected," the statement added.
The Brazilian president concluded by saying, "We, the political leaders of the democratic world, cannot remain silent in the face of this endless massacre."
Tensions have been rising between the South American country and the Israeli regime ever since the latter launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israel’s bloody onslaught has so far killed 38,584 Palestinians, mostly women and children, leaving 88,881 others injured.
Brazil withdrew its ambassador to Israel in May after its president accused the occupying regime of genocide.
Lula, who is an outspoken critic of Israel’s war on Gaza, said in February that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn’t been seen in any other moment in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
In early July, Brazil adopted a free trade agreement with the Palestinian Authority in a show of support for the Palestinian statehood.
“The agreement is a concrete contribution to an economically viable Palestinian state, which can live peacefully and harmoniously with its neighbors,” Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry had already recognized the Palestinian state and allowed for its embassy to be built in the Brazilian capital in 2010.
Brazil is not the sole South American country to show a strong reaction to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Earlier in May, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro broke diplomatic relations between Bogota and Tel Aviv, after he suspended purchases of weapons from the regime.
Petro had previously compared Israel’s appalling actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany.