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By Emmanuel Adeleke
The king of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz, has summoned an emergency meeting of the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The OIC is the second largest organisation after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The organisation is the collective voice of the Muslim world.
The meeting, according to a statement posted on OIC’s official website on Sunday, is slated for October 18 and 19, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The emergency meeting was summoned to discuss the ongoing conflict in the Gaza strip between Hamas and Israel.
“At the invitation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which chairs the current session of the Islamic Summit and the Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Organization’s Executive Committee is convening an urgent open-ended extraordinary meeting at the ministerial level, to address the escalating military situation in Gaza and its environs as well as the deteriorating conditions that endanger the lives of civilians and the overall security and stability of the region.
“The extraordinary meeting of the Executive Committee of the OIC will take place on Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at the General Secretariat headquarters in Jeddah Governorate,” the statement read.
On October 7, Hamas launched an unprecedented and coordinated land, air and sea incursion of Israel which reportedly killed 1,300 Israelis.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said 2,450 have been killed in the past eight days, which is more than during the entire 2014 war, which lasted 51 days.
Nigeria has been a member of OIC since 1986.