DHAKA: Selena Gomez is the latest celebrity to express solidarity with Palestinians suffering under Israel’s brutal assault of Palestinians in Gaza.

The young pop star posted a message on Instagram on Friday urging her followers to ‘pray for those families and babies today’, gulfnews.com publishes this report on Saturday.

While many of her fans praised her post, the singer was attacked by pro-Israeli fans and unfollowed by many.

On Tuesday, Barbados-born pop star Rihanna posted #FreePalestine on her twitter feed, but deleted it eight minutes later after she received a barrage of replies criticising her.

Instead she posted a picture of a Palestinian and Israeli boy hugging with the caption, ‘Let’s pray for peace and a swift end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! Is there any hope?’

Pro-Israeli fans have viciously attacked celebrities that post messages in solidarity with Palestine.

Just last week the British band Coldplay received 12,000 comments within a day, after posting a link on their Facebook page for a music video by OneWorld entitled ‘Freedom for Palestine’.

Many of them contained promises to boycott the band, but other comments were praising the band for its stance.

BDST: 1954 HRS, JUL 19, 2014