Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa announced Thursday that Arab foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday in the wake of Israel's killing of 18 Palestinians in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The AL chief said in a statement that the emergency meeting would be used to discuss the latest developments in the Palestinian territories and Arab nations' response to the Israeli aggression.

The meeting would be held in the AL headquarters at the request of Lebanon and the Palestinians, Moussa said.

He expressed that the Arab world and the AL supported the Palestinian people in their appeal to set up an international fact- finding mission to probe into the Wednesday killing in Beit Hanoun.

Moussa also called on the U.S. to play an active and objective role regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Israeli artillery barrage ripped through a cluster of houses in the northern Gaza town at dawn on Wednesday, killing at least 18 civilians, mostly women and children.

The attack was the deadliest on Palestinian civilians in the past several years, prompting a wave of strong censure across the Arab world and the international community.

Source: Xinhua