The European Union’s foreign ministers have urged Israel not to cut off water, food, or electricity to Gaza and called for humanitarian corridors for those trying to flee the territory.

The ministers held emergency talks on Tuesday after Hamas’s surprise attack and Israel unleashed a reprisal bombing on Gaza.

The EU ministers insisted on the need for “respect of international law humanitarian law, and it means no blockage of water, food or electricity to the civil population in Gaza”, Josep Borrell, high representative of the European union for foreign affairs and security policy, said while speaking with journalists in Oman’s capital Muscat.

He said the EU meeting called for “humanitarian corridors to facilitate people who have to escape the bombing of Gaza” across the border to Egypt.

“Not all the Palestinian people are terrorists,” he said.

“A collective punishment against all Palestinians will be unfair, and unproductive. It will be against our interest and against the interest of peace.

“The fact is that at the moment the casualties in Gaza are also increasing, 150,000 people are internally displaced and the humanitarian situation is dire,” Borrell said.

“So we will have to support more, not less, more,” he added.

Brussels had earlier rowed back comments from EU neighborhood commissioner Oliver Varhelyi that the bloc was immediately suspending “all payments” to the Palestinians.

But the EU’s executive arm has launched an “urgent review” to see if any funds have indirectly gone towards funding Hamas.