European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has turned it into the world’s biggest “open-air graveyard”.
“Gaza was before the war the greatest open-air prison. Today it’s the greatest open-air graveyard,” Borrell said as reported by AP.
“It’s a graveyard for tens of thousands of people and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law,” Borrell added.
He told a conference that Tel Aviv was using famine as a “weapon of war” and provoking a famine.
The EU has struggled to come up with a united front with many countries backing Israel and others are more pro-Palestinian. The group is likely to discuss a proposal tabled by Ireland and Spain to suspend a cooperation agreement with Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel carried out an overnight raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, with reports of tanks and heavy gunfire at the facility.
The Israeli government has said that its forces were carrying out a “high precision operation in limited areas” of the hospital. The government claims that senior Hamas terrorists have regrouped inside the hospital.
The Gaza health ministry has termed the operation as a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”.
Earlier, the Israeli government had carried out an extensive operation at the same hospital in November. In January, the army said it had dismantled Hamas’ entire command structure in the northern Gaza Strip. Now, they are again back at the hospital to arrest Hamas operatives they say had returned there.
One of the key sticking points between Israel and Hamas in enforcing a ceasefire has been the demand by Hamas for civilians displaced by the war to return to their homes in northern Gaza..
The war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that killed close to 1,200 people. Israeli forces have killed over 30,000 people in response to the attack.
