South Africa calls for UN force to protect civilians in Gaza

JOHANNESBURG (AA) – South Africa has called on the United Nations to deploy a rapid protection force to protect the civilian population in Gaza.

“All countries genuinely committed to a rules-based system underpinned by international law must act immediately,” South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation or foreign ministry said in a strongly worded statement.

Pretoria also called on the global community to hold Israel accountable for breaches of international law and also mourned the number of children killed in the conflict.

It quoted a report by UK-based charity ‘Save the Children’ which said the number of children killed in Gaza over the last three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across all the world’s conflict zones since 2019.

The statement said that since most of the killings from the start of the current conflict on October 7 are of non-combatants, those responsible for their deaths must be held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It also called for the crime of genocide to be investigated.

It added that the scale of deaths in Gaza is a direct result of the unlawful actions by Israel on the peoples of Gaza, the first of which is occupation.

The Palestinian death toll from Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip has climbed to 8,306, the Health Ministry in the blockaded enclave said on Monday.

The fatalities include 3,457 children and 2,136 women, while more than 21,048 people were injured amidst inadequate and overwhelmed medical facilities, it said.