European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Saturday urged an immediate halt to military action by both Israel and the Palestinians, saying "there is no military solution" to the situation in Gaza.
In a statement issued after Israeli airstrikes killed more than200 people and wounded more than 750 others in the Gaza Strip earlier in the day, Solana expressed extreme concern at the violence and bloodshed.
"The EU has repeatedly condemned rocket attacks against Israel. The current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on the Palestinian civilians and will only worsen the humanitarian crisis as well as complicate the search for a peaceful solution," he said.
Solana urged Israel and the Palestinians to return to calm and called on everybody in the region to use their influence to encourage restraint and prevent recourse to violence.
Meanwhile, he called on Israel to reopen passages in and out of Gaza to "allow humanitarian and regular commercial flows," and repeated EU's promise that it is ready to resume the monitoring mission at Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, Israel launched air strikes against the Gaza Strip from 11:30 a.m. local time (0930 GMT), hitting more than 30 targets, most of them security compounds run by the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement.
Hamas has vowed to avenge the strikes with rocket attacks and suicide bombings. Just about an hour after the Israeli airstrikes, militants in Gaza bombed southern Israeli towns with rockets, killing one Israeli woman.
Source: Xinhua
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