US designates Palestine Action activist group 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist'

The Trump administration has designated the UK activist group Palestine Action a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), as part of its efforts to go after what it described as "violent far-left terror networks".

Wednesday's decision comes a year after the United Kingdom banned the group for damaging materials at weapons factories run by Elbit Systems.

Elbit is a key provider of weapons to the Israeli military, which has for nearly three years carried out what the United Nations and Holocaust scholars have called a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Palestine Action is now sanctioned in the US "for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism", the Department of the Treasury said in a statement.