BRUSSELS: The EU's humanitarian aid chief called on Monday for "meaningful" pauses in the fighting in Gaza and urgent deliveries of fuel to keep hospitals working in the territory.
"It is urgent to define and respect humanitarian pauses," Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, told a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Brussels.
"Fuel needs to get in. As you could see, more than half of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip stopped working, primarily because of lack of fuel, and fuel is desperately needed."
The appeal went out as battles have raged around Gaza's largest hospital, which has become the focus in the five-week-old war.
The Palestinian health ministry said on Monday the hospitals in the centre of the heaviest fighting in north Gaza have been forced out of service amid shortages and the fierce combat.
The EU's 27 countries issued a statement on Sunday saying hospitals "must be protected".
The bloc demanded "immediate humanitarian pauses" to allow desperately needed aid into the besieged territory.
"These pauses have to be meaningful," Lenarcic said.
"First of all, they have to be announced well in advance of the implementation so organisations can prepare to exploit them. Second, they have to be clearly defined time-wise."
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted that "Gaza needs more aid from any point of view".
"Water, fuel, food. This aid is available, is in the border waiting to come in," he said.
Borrell announced that he would travel to "Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan this week to discuss humanitarian access and assistance and political issues with regional leaders".
Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said that hospitals in Gaza should not be turned into "battlefields".
"Patients who are in intensive care units have no chance," he said.
"There is no more oxygen, there is no more water, there are no more medicines. So these people are going to die." — AFP
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