TEHRAN - The Iranian foreign ministry on Thursday announced Iran's full support for the Palestinian cause.

In a statement, the ministry urged the Islamic countries and the entire world "to help end Israeli occupation and aggression and restore the Palestinian people's rights."

The ministry said back in 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homeland.

It described Nakba Day, or "Day of Catastrophe," as "the starting point of Israeli crimes against the true owners of Palestine, including building settlements, further displacing the Palestinians, desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque, maintaining a crippling siege on Gaza, and annexing the occupied side of Syria's Golan Heights."

Palestinians commemorate the Nakba Day every year on May 15, in memory of the forcible displacement of nearly two thirds of the Palestinian people before and after the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948.