2023-10-12 03:01:00
Surrounded by rubble and destruction, hospitals in the Gaza Strip are on the verge of collapse amid a general power outage that adds to the shortage of medical supplies and personnel, compromising the care of more than five thousand wounded. The Israeli projectiles seriously damaged the devices that supplied electricity from Israel, affecting the networks in numerous provinces of this Palestinian enclave, which is experiencing the fifth day of war between Hamas and Israel. In addition, several ambulances were unusable and medical personnel died from the attacks.
“Our capacity is at the limit and we can only try to maintain the lives of the wounded,” said Dr. Medhat Abbas, spokesman for the Al Shifa Medical Complex, the largest hospital in Gaza City. “We are facing a serious shortage of energy, supplies and human resources,” emphasized Dr. Abás, assuring that the fuel left in the hospital generators “will not last more than four days.”
At least four Palestinian Red Crescent health workers were killed this Wednesday in an attack by the Israeli Army once morest an ambulance in the northern Gaza Strip. The organization called to stop “war crimes” and demanded that “the Israeli occupation authorities be held accountable.” He also explained that the deceased are Jalil al Sharif, Yusri al Masri, Ahmad Dahman and Hatem Awad, without the Israeli authorities having commented on the matter.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reiterated its call for all parties to “respect their legal obligations under international humanitarian law.” “This is not negotiable. Civilians, health personnel, health centers and civilian infrastructure must be respected and protected at all times. They are not a target,” he said.
“Total siege” and darkness
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday ordered a “total encirclement” of the Gaza Strip. This Wednesday, Energy Minister Israel Katz insisted on that point, declaring: “We have decided to cut off the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now their local power plant has collapsed and there is no electricity in Gaza.”
“We will continue to reinforce the siege until Hamas’ threat to Israel and the world is eliminated,” Katz said in a statement. This narrow territory has been isolated and blocked by air, land and sea by the Jewish State and Egypt since 2007, when Hamas took power.
The enclave’s electric company cut off the electricity supply this Wednesday at 2 p.m., as the only plant in the Strip ran out of fuel. It only has 300,000 liters of fuel left, which covers just 10 hours of light, and which for the moment is reserved until Israel accepts that Egypt send fuel through the Rafah crossing, so the power outage might last several days.
This rationing will affect critical areas of hospitals such as intensive care units, maternity wards and other departments, while lighting will be reduced to a minimum. The Palestinian Health Ministry called on the international community to put pressure on Israel to allow in essential fuel and medical supplies.
Sending humanitarian aid
The Egyptian Red Crescent announced this Wednesday the sending of a humanitarian aid convoy to the Rafah border crossing, which connects the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula with the Gaza Strip, to receive critical cases that require transfer across the Egyptian border. .
The organization was already able to deliver urgent medical aid to its Palestinian counterpart, but now Egypt keeps the crossing closed, largely due to Israeli bombings once morest the area around the crossing. This announcement comes on the same day that Jordan said it will send its first humanitarian aid plane since the start of the war to Egypt to be delivered through Rafah.
In previous escalations, humanitarian aid might be supplied through the Rafah crossing, but Israel refuses that possibility for the moment and the crossing has been closed since Tuesday, when the Israeli Army bombed the area, forcing a vehicle to turn back. transported fuel nearby.
The injured might not be transported to Egyptian hospitals either, while numerous Gazans, many of them with dual nationality, desperately seek to leave the Strip and face waiting lists of at least four weeks.
Since the start of the war, the Strip has suffered 625 power outages lasting several hours. In addition to affecting hospitals, they compromise wastewater pumps and drinking water wells, water desalination plants and other essential services. There are regarding 260,000 displaced people in the enclave, most of them refugees in UN schools.
Since the Islamist movement Hamas, which de facto rules the Strip, surprised Israel last Saturday with an unprecedented attack by land, air and sea, the Israeli Army has counterattacked with incessant bombings on 2,687 targets, many of them militia structures. , but also homes, mosques and other civil facilities. The conflict so far leaves more than 1,200 dead on the Israeli side and at least 1,055 dead on the Palestinian side.
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