The EU's foreign affairs spokesman, Peter Stano, said that the EU was seriously concerned about the news of mass graves in the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis (south) and the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City (north).

"This obliges us to ask for an independent investigation into all the allegations and all the circumstances, because it raises the impression that there might have been violations of international human rights," Stano said, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.

Stano said that the EU is very consistent on the issue, "whether it is about Gaza or any other part of the world".

He said that the discovery of the mass graves reinforces the need for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, also so that "all atrocities or reports of atrocities are investigated".

"And this also applies to the immediate release of the hostages" held by Hamas, he said.

The spokesman made it clear that the EU was joining the UN's appeal on Tuesday for an investigation into the mass graves in Gaza.

At least 310 bodies have already been exhumed from several mass graves in the courtyards of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, from where Israeli troops withdrew at the beginning of April, after four months of fighting in the area.

The mass graves found in the Al-Shifa hospital contained more than 200 bodies.

The war was triggered by an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas in southern Israel that caused around 1,200 deaths and more than two hundred hostages, taken to Gaza by the attackers.

Since then, Israel has been carrying out a military offensive in Gaza that has already caused more than 34,200 deaths, according to the Health Ministry of the territory governed by Hamas.

The European Commission also said today that it expects the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to comply with the recommendations of the independent report requested by the UN.

The authors of the report proposed improvements to the functioning of UNRWA, but considered it indispensable and irreplaceable, after Israel accused several members of the agency of involvement in the attacks of 7 October.

The European Commission disbursed an initial instalment of 50 million euros in early March out of the 82 million it has earmarked for UNRWA in 2024, following the commitments made by the agency.

UNRWA has undertaken to carry out a staff review to confirm that they were not involved in the attacks and to create new controls to mitigate such risks in the future.

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