Agencies - Irish foreign minister Michael Martin has described the Zionist blockade on the Gaza Strip as "inhumane and unacceptable" in an opinion piece for the International Herald Tribune published on Friday.

Martin, who visited Gaza Strip last week, described the living conditions in the Strip as "medieval", adding, "The tragedy of Gaza is that it is fast in danger of becoming a tolerated humanitarian crisis".

“[It is] a situation that is proving extremely difficult to remedy or ameliorate due to the blockade and the wider ramifications of efforts to try and achieve political progress in the Middle East,” Martin, who was the first European foreign minister to enter the Mediterranean coastal strip in over a year, said.

He will raise the issue at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Cordoba, Spain, this weekend, he said. The European Union Commission and EU member states are the largest aid donors to Gaza.

“What I witnessed in Gaza, amidst all the rubble and devastation, was a population traumatized and reduced to poverty by an unjust and completely counterproductive blockade,” Martin said.