PRETORIA (AFP) — Israel is a “threat” to its region because it owns nuclear weapons, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.

“I right now see Israel as a threat for its region, because it has the atomic bomb,” Erdogan said in a foreign policy speech during an official visit to South Africa.

He also accused Israel of committing “state terrorism.”

Erdogan in the past has accused the West of “double standards” in the way that it has tried to ban Iran from building nuclear weapons without taking similar measures against Israel.

Turkey downgraded relations with one-time ally Israel after the latter refused to apologise for its raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla, in which nine Turkish activists died on May 31, 2010.

Erdogan’s remarks came in response to comments from an Israeli embassy diplomat in South Africa, who blamed radical Islamic organisation Hamas for launching rocket attacks into Israeli territory.

“I have asked many Israeli officials, how many Israelis, have been killed by rockets launched from Gaza and Palestine. I could not get an answer,” Erdogan said.

“Yet tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed from bombs that have rained down on them from Israel.”