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About 70% of electricity generators at hospitals in the Gaza Strip have gone out of service because of shortages of fuel, oil and spare parts amid the ongoing Israeli blockade, the Health Ministry said Wednesday.
Zaher al-Wahidi, director of the ministry’s Health Information Center, said at a news conference at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that shortages of fuel and oil threatened to bring critical and life-saving hospital departments to a halt at any moment.
Wahidi rejected Israeli claims that it was facilitating the entry of medical aid and logistical supplies into Gaza, saying such statements were attempts to “improve the image” of the situation and conceal what he described as a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in the enclave.
He said the supplies allowed into Gaza “represent only a very small amount” and do not meet even the minimum operational needs of health facilities, leaving them “struggling between life and death.”
“The health system in the Gaza Strip is being driven toward a systematic and mass execution, going beyond a humanitarian catastrophe to a fully fledged health genocide,” Wahidi said.
Wahidi said the fuel crisis also led public transport companies and buses to announce a complete or near-total halt in operations Wednesday, preventing hundreds of medical workers from reaching their workplaces.
He said the transport shutdown was further isolating health facilities and hampering their ability to respond to emergencies.
“Health facilities have turned into isolated structures slowly dying amid the continued comprehensive blockade and the prevention of essential necessities of life from entering,” he said.
Wahidi said the crisis coincided with an “unprecedented shortage” of medicines and medical supplies, the disruption of diagnostic equipment and the closure of treatment routes abroad for patients and wounded people on waiting lists.
He urged the international community, the U.N. Security Council, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to take “immediate and urgent action” to allow the entry of essential medical and operational supplies.
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, nearly 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 174,000 injured, while about 90% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
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