By Staff, Agencies Colombia has chosen to terminate its diplomatic relations with the “Israeli regime due to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which it perceives as genocidal. President Gustavo Petro, a vocal critic of the brutal military onslaught, announced the decision, addressing a May Day rally in the capital Bogota on Wednesday.

"And we here in front of you, the government of change, the president of the republic informs that tomorrow diplomatic relations” with the “Israeli” entity “will be cut," he said.

"[We cut diplomatic ties] because of them having…a genocidal president,” he added.

At least 34,568 people, most of them women, children and adolescents, have been killed in the war that was launched on October 7 following al-Aqsa Flood, a retaliatory operation staged by Gaza’s resistance groups.

“I believe that today all of humanity, in the streets, by the millions, agrees with us and we agree with them,” Petro said, pointing to the monumental rallies that have been held all over the world in protest at the war since its onset.

“It cannot be, they can't return, the times of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our passivity.

If Palestine dies, humanity dies and we will not let it die as we will not let humanity die." Also in October, Petro blasted Yoav Gallant, the “Israeli” entity’s war minister, for using a language about the people of Gaza that was akin to what the “Nazis said of the Jews”.

The entity responded by "halting security exports" to the Latin American country.

In February, the Colombian head of state suspended “Israeli” weapons purchases after a deadly attack by the entity’s military against the Gazans, who had gathered to receive humanitarian aid, saying the attack “is called genocide and recalls the Holocaust”