CAIRO
Arab foreign ministers attending an emergency meeting in the Egyptian capital Cairo late on Monday expressed support for an Egyptian initiative to bring about ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The foreign ministers also expressed backing for a request by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the United Nations to put the state of Palestine under international protection.
In a statement following their meeting in Cairo, the Arab top diplomats called on Israel to "immediately" suspend what they described as its "aggressions" against the Gaza Strip.
They also held the self-proclaimed Jewish state fully responsible for the human and material casualties inflicted on the coastal Palestinian enclave as a result of a week of Israeli strikes against it.
The foreign ministers said they would assign Arab representatives at the U.N. Security Council to lobby for a resolution forcing Israel to suspend its "aggression" on Gaza.
Tension has been running high in the Palestinian territories since Israel launched a deadly offensive on Gaza last Monday with the stated aim of halting rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.
At least 187 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1300 others injured in unrelenting Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip since the operation began last Monday.
Gaza-based resistance factions, for their part, have continued to fire rockets at Israeli cities in response to the ongoing Israeli attacks.
No Israeli fatalities have been reported thus far.
By Salah Gomaa
www.aa.com.tr/en
