Colombian President Gustavo Petro has announced that his country will suspend coal exports to Israel as a rebuke against its deadly offensive against Hamas in Gaza, AFP reports.

Colombia is Israel’s main coal supplier with exports of some $450 million in 2023, according to the Israeli embassy in Bogota, which remains operational despite Petro’s government severing diplomatic ties in May.

Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a fierce critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Saturday on X that coal exports to Israel would be suspended “until the genocide stops”.

A government decree specified that the restrictions would remain “until the orders of provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)… are fully complied with.”

According to the Colombian government, the coal export ban will enter into force five days after the decree is published in the official gazette and will not affect goods that have already been authorized for shipment.

Bogota underscored coal’s role as “a “strategic resource for the manufacture of weapons, the mobilisation of troops and the manufacture of provisions for military operations.” Petro also said Colombia would stop purchasing weapons made by Israel, one of the main suppliers of the South American country’s security forces.