(JTA) – A candidate for Finland’s Center Party said Israel is systematically murdering Palestinian children, women and elderly people.

Abdirahim Hussein, a former chairperson of the Center Party’s youth division, made the statement last week in a blog post about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Tundra Tabloids website.

“We have for the last few years witnessed brutal actions in which children, women and the elderly having been systematically murdered. This all happened less than a year ago,” wrote Hussein, who was born in Somalia in 1978 and immigrated to Finland in 1994.

Israel has maintained that it sought to avoid civilian casualties in its war last summer with Hamas in Gaza following the Islamist group’s firing of rockets into centers of civilian population in Israel.

The Center Party is one of Finland’s largest with 36 seats in parliament out of 200. Hussein, a journalist and social activist, is currently running for the party’s 13th slot in this month’s parliamentary elections.