DHAKA: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has called the Holocaust ‘the most heinous crime’ in modern history.

The remarks were released ahead of Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, reports the BBC.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Abbas ‘can’t say the Holocaust is terrible while... embracing those who seek the destruction of the Jewish people’.

Israel is opposed to a recent unity deal between Abbas’s Fatah group and its Islamist rival Hamas.

Hamas has traditionally refrained from acknowledging the Holocaust and in 2009 protested against the subject being taught in UN-run schools in Gaza.

About six million Jews were murdered in the Nazi genocide during World War II.

In his statement, Abbas ‘expressed his sympathy with the families of the victims and many other innocent people who were killed by the Nazis’.

BDST: 2106 HRS, APR 27, 2014