The EU’s humanitarian aid chief has called for “meaningful” pauses in the fighting in Gaza and urgent deliveries of fuel to keep hospitals working in the enclave, AFP reports.

“It is urgent to define and respect humanitarian pauses,” Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, said at 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.”

“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.”