Fears for Gaza hospitals as fuel, other aid run low

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that hospitals have only two days’ fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled.
The alarm came a day after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant more than a year into the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas fighters.
The United Nations and others have repeatedly decried humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza where Israeli security services said yesterday they had killed two commanders involved in Hamas’ October 2023 storming that triggered the war.
Medics in the Palestinian territory said an overnight Israeli raid on Beit Lahia and nearby Jabalia resulted in dozens killed or missing.
“We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of fuel entry,” Marwan al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said during a press conference.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) had already expressed grave concern Tuesday for hospitals still partly operating in Gaza.
“It’s getting harder and harder to get the aid in,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in Geneva.
Late Thursday, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, Muhannad Hadi, said: “The delivery of critical aid across Gaza, including food, water, fuel and medical supplies, is grinding to a halt.”
In a statement, he said that for more than six weeks Israeli authorities “have been banning commercial imports” while “a surge in armed looting” has targeted aid convoys.
Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping in northern Gaza, Israel began its air and ground operation in Jabalia and then expanded it to Beit Lahia.
Gaza’s civil defence rescue agency could not immediately give an exact toll after the latest Israeli raid, but the health ministry says Israel’s operation in the north has killed thousands.
The UN says more than 100,000 have been displaced from the area, and an official told the Security Council last week that people “are effectively starving”.
Issuing the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the Hague-based ICC said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe they bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and crimes against humanity including over “the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies”
US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s top military supplier, called the warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, but other world leaders expressed support for the court.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said yesterday Netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot in the country.
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Deif. Israel said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
On the day the warrants were issued, a UN representative said an Israeli raid on Syria this week was “likely the deadliest” by Israel on the country so far. Yesterday, a war monitor said the strikes on Palmyra killed 92 pro-Iran fighters. Israel again bombed Gaza yesterday.
In Gaza City, just south of Jabalia, one man who said he took his cousins to hospital after a strike urged “the world... to put an end” to the war.
“We’ve had enough,” said Belal, who gave only his first name and said 10 members of his family had been killed.
“I’m the only one left,” he said.
At least 44,056 people have been killed in Gaza during more than 13 months of war, most of them civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.