Colombia to cut diplomatic ties with Israel

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday his country will sever diplomatic ties with Israel, whose leader he described as "genocidal" over its war in Gaza.

"Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed... for having a genocidal president," Petro, a harsh critic of the devastating war against Hamas, told a May Day rally in Bogota.

Petro has taken a critical stance on the Gaza assault that followed an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7  -- which resulted in the deaths of some 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.

In October, just days after the start of the war, Israel said it was "halting security exports" to Colombia after Petro accused Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about the people of Gaza similar to what the "Nazis said of the Jews."

Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, has also asserted that "democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics."

In February, Petro suspended Israeli weapons purchases after dozens of people died in a scramble for food aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory -- an event he said "is called genocide and recalls the Holocaust."

In the October attack, Hamas militants also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 Israel says are presumed dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.