The head of the Iraqi Tennis Federation, Majed Al-Aqili, announced Thursday, August 11, that his country’s team withdrew from the Romanian Tennis Championships, in refusal to confront the Israeli occupation team.

Al-Aqili said in a statement issued on Thursday that the players Nasr and Muhammad Al-Mahdi withdrew from the tournament after they were placed to confront the Zionist entity team.

The boycott of Iraq, which supports the Palestinian cause, is part of an extended series of Arab boycotts of the Israeli occupation at the level of international sports championships.

This step comes two months after the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously on its first law in the fifth parliamentary session to criminalize normalization with the Israeli occupation.