Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill says she will not attend St Patrick’s Day events at the White House in protest against US President Donald Trump’s position on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

Political leaders from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland usually travel to the US for the annual religious and cultural holiday on March 17.

“We are all heartbroken as we witness the suffering of the Palestinian people and the recent comments of the US president around the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza, something I cannot ignore,” O’Neill said at a joint news conference in Dublin alongside the leader of her Sinn Fein party, Mary Lou McDonald.

On her part, McDonald said: “There is an onus on us to act when we believe the US administration is wrong, catastrophically so in the case of Palestine.”