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 on Gaza, told a May Day rally in Bogota.

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."