REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANDA ACEH - Aunur Rofiq Lil Firdaus or Opick, Indonesian singer and composer of Islamic songs, held a charity concert for Palestine on Sunday.

"Palestinian people needs help from all over the world including from Aceh," he told before thousands of his audience.

Opick sang a number of religious songs, and between the songs he explained about the suffering of Palestinian people. The organizing committee collected charity at least 900 million IDR and some valuable goods from the concert.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had called on Indonesia to increase its contribution as the agency is facing a funding shortfall of 37 million USD until the end of the year, an UNRWA spokesperson said.

"If funds are not forthcoming, we will not be able to pay the salaries of teachers, medical personnel, social workers and other staff in December, which will bring our operations to a standstill," Esther Kuish Laroche, the chief of UNRWAs Donor Relations Division, said in her keynote speech at the commemoration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in Jakarta earlier on Thursday.

Laroche noted that in 2012 Indonesian government had increased its contribution to UNRWA from 20 thousand USD to 100 thousand USD.

"We are grateful for that. On this day of solidarity, I would like to call upon your generosity to further increase Indonesias support. I look forward to seeing our relationship deepen and grow further," Laroche, based in Jerusalem, added, while praising Indonesia for its solidarity with the Palestinians for several decades. 

She said the Palestinian refugee population had grown from 750,000 to more than five million people living across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and the West Bank. 

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