By Tass
Copyright tass
CAIRO, September 17. /TASS/. Israel prevents fuel deliveries to medical facilities in the northern provinces of the Gaza Strip, a step that could have dire humanitarian consequences, the enclave’s Health Ministry said on Telegram.
“The occupying [Israeli] authorities stubbornly do not allow the World Health Organization to use alternative routes to deliver fuel to the hospitals in [the provinces of] Gaza and North Gaza,” it said.
The ministry said that with no fuel, generators in the local hospitals would shut down, and so would medical equipment. Ambulances also rely on fuel to save lives. It’s citizens in the enclave that will suffer from all this, as a humanitarian catastrophe now looms in the northern regions of the sector.
On August 18, Al Jazeera channel, citing the Health Ministry, reported that the lion’s share of hospitals in the strip had taken damage and were not operating amid Israeli fighting and shelling — out of about 40 institutions, only 15 are currently functioning, many of them only partially. Hospitals receive no more than 30% of all necessary medicines. At least 1,590 medical workers have died as a result of the escalation of the conflict.
The situation in the Middle East sharply worsened after the penetration of armed Hamas supporters from the Gaza Strip into the Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, accompanied by the killing of residents of border settlements and the seizure of more than 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched a military operation in the enclave with the aim of destroying the military and political structures of Hamas and freeing all the abductees. According to the latest data from the Gaza Health Ministry, the total number of Palestinians killed in the sector has exceeded 64,000, more than 165,000 were wounded. Another 428 local residents, including 146 children, were injured and died of starvation.
