April 18 (Reuters) - Google said on Thursday it had

terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in

protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli

government.

The Alphabet unit said a small number of

protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few

unspecified office locations.

"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing

them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our

policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company

said in a statement.

Google said it had concluded individual investigations,

resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue

to investigate and take action as needed.

In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the

No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of

retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly

participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google

fired.

"Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about

terms and conditions of our labor," the statement added.

The protesting faction says that Project Nimbus, a $1.2

billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon.com ( AMZN ) in

2021 to supply the Israeli government with cloud services,

supports the development of military tools by the Israeli

government.

In its statement, Google maintained that the Nimbus contract

"is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military

workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services."

Protests at Google are not new. In 2018, workers

successfully pushed the company to shelve a contract with the

U.S. military, Project Maven, meant to analyze aerial drone

imagery with potential application in warfare.

(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil

D'Silva)