Fears for Gaza hospitals as fuel, other aid run low

Gaza: The health ministry in Gaza said on Friday that hospitals have only two days fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned...

Gaza: The health ministry in Gaza said on Friday 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 militants. The United Nations and others have repeatedly decried humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza where Israeli security services said on Friday they had killed two commanders involved in Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack 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 Organization 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 coordinator 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. 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.