embrace of solidarity

[Irelia20150604]

The quotation comes from Ecuador army plane crashes in Amazon region killing 22 - BBC News

Quotation: An army plane with 22 people on board has crashed in Ecuador's Amazon region.

"There are no survivors. Our embrace of solidarity to the families and the armed forces. It is a tragedy," President Rafael Correa said on Twitter (in Spanish).

Nineteen of the people on board were Ecuadoran soldiers travelling for a parachuting exercise.
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Hi everyone! What is "embrace of solidarity"?

 

[Thomas Tompion]

I've never hear this put like this, but I clear about what it means.

When someone dies and we wish to express our sympathy, common sense of loss and grief, solidarity (sense that we are united in such a way that we feel ourselves to be a part of the same solid entity), with their family or very close friends, we often embrace them, a gesture which can say what we feel more effectively and less clumsily than can words.

President Rafael Correa is not physically in the presence of these families or the armed forces who are recovering the bodies from the plane. He sends his embrace of solidarity to express his feelings of unity with these people.

I'm confident this is a translation from the Spanish where the equivalent is much more usual.