GAZA CITY: First responders in Gaza said on Thursday (May 8) that their operations were at a near standstill, more than two months into a full Israeli blockade that has left food and fuel in severe shortage.
Israel denies a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Gaza Strip, where it plans to expand military operations to force Hamas to free hostages held there since the Iran-backed group’s unprecedented October 2023 attack.
“Seventy-five per cent of our vehicles have stopped operating due to a lack of diesel fuel,” the civil defence agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
He added that its teams, who play a critical role as first responders in the Gaza Strip, were also facing a “severe shortage of electricity generators and oxygen devices”.
For weeks, UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations have warned of dwindling supplies of everything from fuel and medicine to food and clean water in the coastal territory that is home to 2.4 million Palestinians.
“It is unacceptable that humanitarian aid is not allowed into the Gaza Strip,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.
The situation in Gaza is on a “razor’s edge” and “the next few days are absolutely decisive”, he added.
The UN’s agency for children, UNICEF, warned that Gaza’s children face “a growing risk of starvation, illness and death” after UN-supported kitchens shut down due to lack of food supplies.
Over 20 independent experts mandated by the UN’s Human Rights Council demanded action on Wednesday to avert the “annihilation” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Senior civil defence official Mohammad Mughayyir told AFP that Israeli bombardment across Gaza on Thursday killed 19 people, including nine in a strike that targeted the Abu Rayyan family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia.
On Thursday, Palestinians waited in line to donate blood at a field hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, an AFP journalist reported.
“In these difficult circumstances, we have come to support the injured and sick, amid severe food shortages and a lack of proteins, by donating blood,” Moamen al-Eid, a Palestinian waiting in the line, told AFP.
