Gaza Ministry of Health Announces That Hospitals Have Only 2 Days of Fuel Left

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Friday that hospitals had only two days of fuel left before they were forced to restrict services after the UN warned that aid deliveries to the war-torn region were disrupted.

The alarm came a day after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, more than a year after the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas militants.

The United Nations and others have repeatedly condemned humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza, where Israeli security services said on Friday Hamas had killed two commanders who participated in the war-triggering offensive on Oct. 7, 2023.

An overnight Israeli raid on Beit Lahia and nearby Jabalia left dozens dead or missing, medics in the Palestinian territory said.

Marwan al-Hams, director of Gaza field hospitals, told a press conference: “We are issuing an urgent warning as all hospitals in the Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation (Israel’s) blocking of fuel entry.” conference.

The World Health Organization expressed serious concerns on Tuesday about hospitals still partially operating in Gaza.

“Delivering aid is becoming increasingly difficult,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in Geneva.

Late Thursday, Muhannad Hadi, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories, said: “The distribution of critical aid, including food, water, fuel and medical supplies, across Gaza is coming to a halt.”

The statement said that Israeli authorities have “banned commercial imports” for more than six weeks, and that “an increase in armed looting” has targeted aid convoys.

‘Nonsense and wrong’

Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping in northern Gaza, Israel launched its air and ground operation in Jabalia on October 6 and then expanded it to Beit Lahia.

Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency could not immediately give an exact figure after Israel’s latest raid, but the health ministry says Israel’s operation in the north has killed thousands.

The UN says more than 100,000 people have been displaced from the region, and one official told the Security Council last week that people were “literally starving”.

The Hague-based ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant, said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that these people bore “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as starvation as a method of warfare. food, water, electricity and fuel, and special medical supplies”.

This unprecedented move prompted a harsh reaction from Netanyahu, who said in a statement: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and wrong actions and accusations made against it.”

Netanyahu also said the judges were “guided by anti-Semitic hatred towards Israel.”

On Friday, he thanked his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, for his “moral clarity” in inviting him to visit in defiance of the ICC ruling, which Orban described as “political”.

Hungary currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s biggest military supplier, called the arrest warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, but other world leaders expressed their support for the trial.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said on Friday that Netanyahu would be arrested if he sets foot in the country.

Arrest warrant for Hamas chief

The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas’ chief of staff, Mohammed Deif, saying it had grounds to suspect him of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including Israeli attacks that sparked the war and “sexual and gender-based violence” against hostages. .

Israel said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.

On the day the search warrants were issued, a UN representative said Israel’s attack on Syria this week was “probably the deadliest attack” Israel had ever launched on the country. On Friday, a war monitor said 92 pro-Iranian fighters were killed in attacks on Palmyra.

Israel bombed Gaza again on Friday.

In Gaza City, just south of Jabaliya, a man who said he was taking his cousins ​​to hospital after an attack called on “the world to put an end to the war.”

Belal, who only gave his name and said that 10 members of his family were killed, said, “Enough is enough.”

“I’m the only one left,” he said.

According to the figures of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which the United Nations finds reliable, at least 44,056 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the war that lasted more than 13 months in Gaza.

Hamas triggered the war with the deadliest attack in Israeli history, by AFP’s calculation based on official Israeli figures; This attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians.

The war spread into Lebanon in late September, as Israel stepped up airstrikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah and later sent ground troops into southern Lebanon after nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border clashes that Hezbollah said it supported. of Hamas.

More than 3,580 people have been killed in Lebanon, most since the end of September, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Thousands of UN peacekeepers are in Southern Lebanon. They reported being repeatedly attacked, blaming both Israel and “non-state” actors.

On Friday, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Hezbollah was likely behind the rocket attack that hit its positions and slightly injured four Italian peacekeepers.

Israeli air strikes hit Hezbollah’s southern Beirut stronghold as well as southern Lebanon on Friday, the official National News Agency said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is syndicated.)