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The EU’s top diplomat called on Monday for a pause in hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in order to allow aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip and hostages held there to be released.
Israeli forces have been bombarding Gaza for 17 days and have cut off supplies of electricity and severely restricted supplies of food and water since Hamas launched its deadliest-ever attack on Israel earlier this month.
Although two small convoys of aid have been allowed to enter Gaza in the past two days, aid officials have warned that humanitarian conditions there are catastrophic, and the UN secretary-general António Guterres has called for a pause in fighting to allow in far greater quantities of aid.
“Personally, I think a humanitarian pause is needed in order to allow humanitarian support to come in and be distributed,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, said on Monday morning, as he arrived for a meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
Borrell said the pause was also needed “for giving back the hostages” held by Hamas.
EU leaders plan to endorse the calls for a “humanitarian pause”, according to draft conclusions of a summit later this week seen by the Financial Times. The text may change before the meeting on Thursday and Friday.
EU countries bickered publicly in the week after Hamas’s October 7 attacks over how much backing to give to Israel’s military response, before agreeing on a joint statement that affirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself in line with humanitarian and international law”.
The Israeli military said on Monday morning it had hit 320 targets in Gaza in the preceding 24 hours.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said Israeli armoured and infantry forces had been conducting raids inside the Gaza border region in preparation for the next phase of the war and to search for intelligence regarding hostages.
Hagari added that Hamas had captured at least 222 people during its assault. Hamas officials have previously said that they and other factions in Gaza are holding between 200 and 250 people hostage.
As well as taking hostages, Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people and injured more than 5,400 in the October 7 attacks, according to Israeli officials. Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza has killed 5,087 people and injured 15,273, according to Palestinian officials.
In addition to the bombardment, Israel has mobilised 360,000 troops ahead of a ground invasion of Gaza, and its defence minister Yoav Gallant last week told soldiers that they would soon see Gaza “from the inside”.
Israeli military officials have said they are ready to launch an offensive but are waiting for a green light from Israel’s political leadership, amid reports that negotiations over the hostages held in Gaza are delaying Israel’s ground assault.
“We’re ready to manoeuvre, we [are] increasing our achievements ahead of this operation, and when the government [gives the] order[s], we will execute,” Hagari said on Sunday.
The fighting in Gaza has sent tensions spiralling across the Middle East, with Israeli forces trading cross-border fire with Hizbollah militants in southern Lebanon, Houthi militants firing three missiles in the direction of Israel and violence surging in the occupied West Bank.
Israel-Hamas war
Israel’s military said on Monday morning that overnight it had hit further targets in Lebanon linked to Hizbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group with which it fought a month-long war in 2006.
Hizbollah said five of its fighters had been killed on Saturday, the highest number in a single day since the start of hostilities two weeks ago, bringing the total number to 23, and warned Israel that it would pay a high price if it launched a ground invasion of Gaza, which is home to 2.3mn people.
In a sign of the mounting concerns in Washington that the conflict between Israel and Hamas could spill over into a regional conflagration, the US has sent more air defences to the Middle East, including a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, which can shoot down ballistic missiles.
It has also redirected one of two carrier strike groups which had been ordered to head to the eastern Mediterranean to move instead to the Persian Gulf.