THE European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) called on European Union ambassadors today to urgently ban EU trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

At a foreign affairs council meeting on Monday, ministers again failed to take such a decision, but EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said action against trade with settlements “got the most support” of all the options discussed. Ambassadors have now been tasked with taking this forward.

ETUC general secretary Esther Lynch said: “The EU is bound to ensure its trade policy is consistent with international law and with its own objective of a two-state solution. Continuing to trade with the settlements works against both.”

In Gaza, Israeli air strikes have killed about a dozen people in the past two days, health officials said today.

Among the dead were a woman and six police officers who died in an attack on a police station in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp on Tuesday.

Today, three members of the same family were killed in central Gaza, while in the south, a man died on Tuesday in the bombing of a tent camp in Khan Younis. Israeli forces also shot dead a child on Tuesday in the Muwasi area west of Rafah.

Israel’s military claimed that four of the police officers were Hamas fighters.