Humanitarian operations in Gaza at risk of grinding to a halt for lack of fuel

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a makeshift tent camp in Rafah, Gaza, May 10, 2024. [AP Photo]

The United Nations reports Israel's recent evacuation orders, which are linked to military operations in Rafah, have led to the forcible displacement of at least 110,000 people, many of whom already have been displaced multiple times.

UNICEF's Young said that Thursday he walked around al-Mawasi, the so-called humanitarian zone where Israel has told people in eastern Rafah they should move. He described the area as being jammed with trucks, buses, cars, and donkey carts loaded with people and their possessions.

"People I speak with tell me they are exhausted, terrified and know life in al-Mawasi will, again, impossibly, be harder. Families lack proper sanitation facilities, drinking water and shelter," Young said.

"Displaced people are subject to even greater risk of disease, infections, malnutrition, dehydration and other protection health concerns. Beyond a few mobile health points and field hospitals with limited capacity, the closest hospital is at least four kilometers away, assuming that the road to it is safe to use," he said.

OCHA says within the next 24 hours, numerous health facilities will run out of fuel. Among those affected are five Ministry of Health-run hospitals, 28 ambulances, 17 primary health care centers, five field hospitals and 10 mobile clinics "which provide immunizations, trauma care and malnutrition services."

Amid the gloomy picture, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris noted "one bright spot."

Thanks to international support, she said the Naser Medical Complex, which had been severely damaged during shelling by Israeli forces, has been made partially functional. The hospital is accepting dialysis patients and the laboratories are able to perform some blood tests, she said.

"But as has been made absolutely clear, without fuel all that stops," Harris said. "All the things a hospital does, the lifesaving treatments, no longer can be done.

"If you have got somebody back from the brink, you have operated on them, you have put them on a ventilator, and the ventilator stops, they no longer breathe," she said. "So, without fuel, no matter what everybody has done, the whole system collapses."

Harris said WHO missions currently have been suspended in the north "to try to ensure that we can provide as much fuel as possible to hospitals in the south to keep them going."

She said work was continuing to repair the sewage system in the Naser Medical Complex, adding that "this is something that has to be done throughout the Gaza strip."

"A lack of sewage services, lack of clean water means if the bombs do not get you, you die of thirst, infectious diseases or simply hunger," she said.