Catalonia joins global petition for 'immediate' ceasefire in Lebanon 

Catalonia has joined a global petition for an "immediate" ceasefire in Lebanon, the minister for EU and foreign affairs, Jaume Duch, has announced. 

After an emergency meeting on Thursday afternoon with the Catalan Emergency Humanitarian Aid Committee (CCAHE), Duch explained that the health and interior departments were open to activate "assistance procedures" and that some people affected by the conflict could be treated in Catalan hospitals. 

"We are here to help", Duch said, who organized the meeting to bring together various entities and convey his readiness to help in from an "administrative and institutional point of view." 

The CCAHE is a body attached to the Catalan Development Cooperation Agency created to coordinate the Catalan public administrations (government, Barcelona City Council and municipal entities) and civil society in emergency humanitarian situations. 

In an appearance in Parliament last week, Duch already announced that he intended to allocate more funds to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. 

Now he has to decide, however, how to distribute the €500,000 among the UN agencies in the region, taking into account the new attacks in Lebanon.