PRETORIA, February 13. /TASS/. The South African government has sent an urgent request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over Israel’s actions in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the presidential administration said.

"The South African Government has made an urgent request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to consider whether the decision announced by Israel to extend its military operations in Rafah, which is the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza, requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza," it said in a statement.

The request stresses that the court has the right to decide at any time as to "whether the circumstances of the case require the indication of provisional measures which ought to be taken or complied with by any or all of the parties" to the conflict.

"In a request submitted to the court yesterday (12 February 2024), the South African government said it was gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction. This would be in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court's Order of 26 January 2024," the statement noted. "South Africa trusts this matter will receive the necessary urgency in light of the daily death toll in Gaza," the presidential administration added.

South Africa brought the case over Israel’s possible violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to the International Court of Justice on December 29, 2023. The case files say that the Israeli authorities’ actions can be described as an act of genocide because they are based on the specific intent "to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group." On January 26, the court decreed that Israel should take all necessary measures to prevent genocide in Gaza and report on them within a month.