Gaza humanitarian work at risk of shutdown, UN warns amid fuel blockade

BEIRUT — Fuel stocks in Gaza have almost run out in the four months since Israel last allowed any fuel to enter the enclave, leaving the entire humanitarian response at risk of imminent shutdown, United Nations officials said this week. Gaza hospitals warned Wednesday that they are once again on the brink of stopping services.

“Available and accessible fuel stocks for humanitarian operations within Gaza are all but depleted, and critical services have already begun to shut down,” Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

“The entire humanitarian response may halt very soon unless the supply of fuel resumes immediately,” she said.

Israel has not allowed any fuel to enter Gaza since the beginning of March, Cherevko said. Israel broke a two-month-long ceasefire with Hamas and resumed striking Gaza on March 18.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 40 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 10 members of a family sheltering in a tent, hospital officials said Wednesday. The strikes came as U.S. President Donald Trump pushed for a ceasefire that might end the war and free dozens of Israeli hostages.

Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in two days at the White House on Tuesday evening, but there was no sign of a breakthrough.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the 21-month war until Hamas is destroyed, while the militant group has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said the dead included 17 women and 10 children. The war has gutted Gaza's health system, with several hospitals taken out of service and leading physicians killed in Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza over the past day, including militants, booby-trapped structures, weapons storage facilities, missile launchers and tunnels. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding weapons and fighters among civilians.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli Defense Ministry agency that oversees all movement of aid into and within the Gaza Strip, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel has said that Hamas siphons off aid deliveries for its own benefit, a charge that many aid organizations have denied.

The United Nations has been rationing its fuel supplies to prioritize the most critical and lifesaving services — health, water, sanitation and telecommunications — but it is not enough, Cherevko said.

“Attempts to retrieve stocks from areas placed under displacement orders have often been denied, especially from the south,” she said, referring to evacuation orders that Israeli authorities have routinely issued to civilians in the areas where they planned to operate. Other attempts “were conducted under extremely difficult conditions, and some reserves were looted,” she said, without saying who may have looted the reserves.

OCHA separately warned this week that all of the accessible fuel from U.N. reserves has already been allocated to support humanitarian efforts, “leaving no fuel supplies currently available for distribution.”

“Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink. And the deaths this is likely to cause could soon rise sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel to get in,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday.

Shortly before midday on Wednesday, Mohamed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, warned in a news conference that within three hours, his hospital — once Gaza’s largest — would be out of service without an immediate fuel delivery.

“We warn that hundreds of patients and wounded will face certain death if these generators stop. We have 13 patients in the ICU, most of them on ventilators,” said Abu Salmiya. “We have about 100 premature babies in Gaza City hospitals who are in very real danger. … The incubators that protect their temperature and oxygen will stop completely.”

“The operating rooms will stop, and we will not be able to perform operations for the large number of wounded who come to us” after Israeli strikes, he added.

The hospital also stopped kidney dialysis on Tuesday so that the remaining fuel could keep the ICU open, Abu Salmiya said. As Al-Shifa began to run critically low on Tuesday, it was plunged into darkness for several minutes. Video showed alarms blaring on the ventilators as the hospital went dark. One doctor in the video is seen manually pumping oxygen for a patient.

Later on Wednesday, the World Health Organization managed to deliver 2,500 liters of fuel to Al-Shifa just in time. But with the hospital requiring at least 1,700 liters a day, the fuel crisis has been postponed by little more than a day, Abu Salmiya told The Post. COGAT did not respond when asked whether the WHO or other hospitals asked to coordinate the transfer of fuel to medical centers.

Meanwhile, mediators are rushing to secure another ceasefire deal while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has exponentially worsened since fuel was last allowed in, Palestinians and aid organizations say, largely due to a separate Israeli-imposed blockade on aid entering the territory that lasted from early March to early May.

Some aid has been allowed to enter the enclave since, but aid groups say hunger is continuing to grow. According to UNICEF, malnutrition in children in recent months has spiked at an “alarming rate.”

But the fuel shortage for humanitarian operations is hampering all aspects of life, aid groups and the U.N. say: Trash is piled high with waste collection reduced, and water and sanitation plants have shut down. Doctors this week reported a surge in meningitis cases among children that could be tied to poor hygiene.

Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah has shut off its generators for six hours every day over the past week to conserve fuel, the hospital’s manager, Eyad Amawi, told The Post by phone. Staffers were pumping oxygen machines by hand on Tuesday, he said.

The hospital needs about 20,000 liters of fuel to operate each month. Amawi estimates it is down to its final 1,000 liters.

“This is a very horrific situation,” he said. “The hospital could suspend at any time.”

He blamed Israeli authorities for the shortage. “They punish us collectively,” he said.

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• Berger reported from Jaffa, Israel. The Associated Press contributed.