“TRICKLE-FEEDING” FUEL INTO GAZA
Abu Selmia warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and accused Israel of “trickle-feeding” fuel to Gaza’s hospitals.
COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about fuel shortages at Gaza’s medical facilities and the risk to patients.
Abu Selmia said Al Shifa’s dialysis department had been shut down to protect the intensive care unit and operating rooms, which can’t be without electricity for even a few minutes.
There are around 100 premature babies in Gaza City hospitals whose lives are at serious risk, he said. Before the war, there were 110 incubators in northern Gaza compared to about 40 now, said Abu Selmia.
“Oxygen stations will stop working. A hospital without oxygen is no longer a hospital. The lab and blood banks will shut down, and the blood units in the refrigerators will spoil,” Abu Selmia said, adding that the hospital could become “a graveyard for those inside”.
DR’S PERFORMING SURGERIES WITHOUT ELECTRICITY
Officials at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis are also wondering how they will cope with the fuel crisis. The hospital needs 4,500 litres of fuel per day, and it now has only 3,000 litres, said hospital spokesperson Mohammed Sakr.
Doctors are performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning. The sweat from the staff is dripping into patients’ wounds, he said.
Earlier this year, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza for nearly three months, before partly lifting it while introducing a US and Israeli-backed scheme that largely bypasses the UN system. Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid, something Hamas denies.
“You can have the best hospital staff on the planet, but if they are denied the medicines and the pain killers and now the very means for a hospital to have light … it becomes an impossibility,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency UNICEF recently returned from Gaza.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began after October 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s response has killed over 57,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced almost all of Gaza’s population and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes, including from the United Nations.
