News - Middle East: On the 74th anniversary of the Nakba (Day of Catastrophe), Palestine’s Foreign Ministry says the catastrophe lingers on amid Israel’s apartheid against the Palestinian people.

The Nakba (Catastrophe) Day marks the 1948 forced expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians from their homes in historical Palestine as Israel proclaimed its illegal existence.

“Our people’s Nakba is still ongoing to this day through the continuation of the occupation [of their land], the settlement [construction] and the fight against the Palestinian presence across the historic Palestine,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday, referring to the Israeli practices against the Palestinians.

The statement also blamed the “double standards” in many Western countries’ foreign policy for the ongoing crimes committed by the Israeli regime against the Palestinians.

Noting that the 74th anniversary of Nakba Day comes just few days after the Israeli murder of veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the “heinous, barbaric attack” on mourners at her funeral, the ministry said the killing and subsequent attack were “a living testimony to the ugliness and racism” of the Israeli regime and its ongoing crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.

Abu Akleh, a veteran correspondent for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network's Arabic service, was shot in the head on Wednesday when she was reporting on an Israeli raid against Palestinians living in the Jenin refugee camp.

Her tragic death sent shock waves across the region, drawing global condemnation against the Israeli regime.