THE Health Ministry in Gaza has warned that healthcare facilities in the war-wracked territory are nearing closure due to an acute fuel shortage for generators and a severe lack of medical supplies, caused by Israel’s heavy import restrictions.
The director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Munir al-Bursh, said more than 60% of vital medications are currently inaccessible in the Gaza Strip as a result of the persistent Israeli blockade.
Al-Bursh underscored that fuel supplies for hospitals in Gaza City and the northern strip are ‘adequate for just the next 48 hours,’ stressing that the dire lack of fuel and medical resources significantly obstructs attempts to assist the wounded amid the ongoing violence.
He condemned Israel for intentionally starving civilians, as fuel deliveries to northern Gaza continue to be blocked for the fourth consecutive day.
He further noted that the Israeli forces have obstructed the delivery of vaccines via the Netzarim corridor into northern Gaza, highlighting the difficulties of immunising children amid persistent violence and the lack of a secure, healthy environment.
Late Sunday, the health ministry announced that it had received 1.26 million doses of polio vaccine, and initiated vaccination of more than 600,000 children under the age of 10, in response to the region’s first confirmed polio case in a quarter of a century.
However, humanitarian agencies have stressed that several factors, including the ongoing airstrikes on Gaza, could hinder the progress of the campaign as at least a seven-day pause in the conflict is needed to ensure effective immunisation.
Palestine was polio-free for 25 years, but the disease made a resurgence due to the collapse of sanitary infrastructure in Gaza.
The spread of the virus has been intensified by the severe overcrowding in al-Mawasi, designated by the Israeli military as a ‘humanitarian zone’, where population density reaches a staggering 30,000 individuals per square kilometre, with many residents living in tents.
Children under five are most at risk from the viral disease, most notably infants under two, since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by the conflict.
The warning comes as over 40,400 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 in the Gaza war, and as patients evacuate al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, the main hospital serving central Gaza, further burdening the already strained healthcare system in the region.
The area surrounding the hospital has been declared a military zone, the Health Ministry announced on Sunday night, causing panic and prompting many to flee the hospital, currently home to 100 patients, including seven in intensive care.
Despite the situation, the ministry confirmed that the medical centre remains operational and that medical personnel have resumed their duties at the facility, urging for its protection.
Only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning, according to the World Health Organisation.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that the ongoing Israeli military attacks and repeated ‘evacuation orders’ continue to impede the delivery of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.
- As the US-backed Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip entered day 326 on Tuesday, aerial and artillery strikes continued to pound and target different areas and massacre more civilians.
Reporters for the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) said that the Israeli occupation army continued to bomb homes and shelter centres and attack citizens in different areas of Gaza during the past 24 hours.
According to media sources, an unknown number of civilians were killed and others were injured in an Israeli attack on a house in Baten as-Samin area in central Khan Younis, south of Gaza.
Israeli warplanes also struck two houses in an-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, with no reported casualties.
A girl child was injured by Israeli gunfire near the UNRWA rest area on the beach of Rafah in southern Gaza.
A civilian was martyred and another was injured in an Israeli attack near al-Abrar Mosque in az-Zeitoun neighbourhood in the southeast of Gaza City.
An Israeli attack on a group of citizens in the same neighbourhood claimed the lives of three of them.
An Israeli airstrike on a house belonging to the family of Basheer in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed four civilians.
A woman was also killed and others were wounded in an Israeli artillery attack on al-Masdar area in central Gaza.
More casualties were reported in other areas of Gaza following Israeli aerial, artillery and shooting attacks Monday night and Tuesday.
- Amnesty International has accused Israeli forces of failing to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimise harm to displaced civilians sheltering at camps while carrying out two attacks in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip last May.
‘These attacks likely were indiscriminate, and one attack likely also disproportionate. Both attacks should be investigated as war crimes,’ Amnesty said in a report published on its website on Tuesday.
‘On 26 May 2024, two Israeli air strikes on the Kuwaiti Peace Camp, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Tal al-Sultan in west Rafah, killed at least 36 people – including six children – and injured more than 100,’ Amnesty explained.
Amnesty affirmed that the Israeli army used two US-made GBU-39 guided bombs in those two airstrikes. ‘The use of these munitions, which project deadly fragments over a wide area, in a camp housing civilians in overcrowded temporary shelters likely constituted a disproportionate and indiscriminate attack, and should be investigated as a war crime.’
On 28 May, in the second incident investigated, the Israeli military fired at least three tank shells at a location in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah which was designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone”. The strikes killed 23 civilians – including 12 children, seven women and four men – and injured many more.’
Amnesty said its research found that the Israeli army used, on that day, unguided munitions in al-Mawasi area, which is full of civilians sheltering in tents, calling for investigating this ‘indiscriminate’ artillery attack as a ‘war crime’.
‘Several of the civilians killed and injured in the Kuwaiti Peace Camp strikes were hit by metal fragments, including a toddler and a young woman who were both decapitated.
‘Other victims sustained deep cuts and broken limbs. The majority of the civilian casualties verified by Amnesty International were caused by the bombs’ fragments, while others sustained extensive burns. An additional body was so badly burned that it could not be identified.
‘The Israeli military would have been fully aware that the use of bombs that project deadly shrapnel across hundreds of meters and unguided tank shells would kill and injure a large number of civilians sheltering in overcrowded settings lacking protection.
‘The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimise, harm to civilians,’ Amnesty said.
