Gaza doctors cram babies into incubators as fuel shortage threatens hospitals
More than 600 attacks on health facilities since October 2023, World Health Organization says
At Gaza's largest hospital, doctors say crippling fuel shortages have led them to put several premature babies in a single incubator as they struggle to keep the newborns alive while Israel presses on with its military campaign.
Israel's offensive in Gaza has caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced almost all of Gaza's population and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes.
Overwhelmed medics say dwindling fuel supplies threaten to plunge them into darkness and paralyze hospitals and clinics in the Palestinian territory, where health services have been pummelled during 21 months of war.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington this week, patients at Al Shifa medical centre in Gaza City faced imminent danger, doctors there said.
"We are forced to place four, five, or sometimes three premature babies in one incubator," said Dr. Muhammad Abu Salamiyah, Al Shifa's director.
"Premature babies are now in a very critical condition."
The threat comes from "neither an airstrike nor a missile — but a siege choking the entry of fuel," Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Reuters.
The shortage is "depriving these vulnerable people of their basic right to medical care, turning the hospital into a silent graveyard," he said.
An Israeli military official said around 160,000 litres of fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities had entered Gaza since Wednesday, but that its distribution around the enclave was not under Israel's purview.
Israeli airstrikes and relentless bombardment have taken a heavy toll on hospitals in Gaza, a tiny strip of land which was under a long, Israeli-led blockade before the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas erupted 21 months ago.
Palestinians and medical workers have accused the Israeli military of attacking hospitals, allegations it rejects.
Israel accuses Hamas of operating from medical facilities and running command centres underneath them, something Hamas denies.
Patients in need of medical care, food and water are paying the price.
Gaza's health sector 'on its knees'
There have been more than 600 attacks on health facilities since the conflict began, the World Health Organization says, without attributing blame. It has described the health sector in Gaza as being "on its knees," with shortages of fuel, medical supplies and frequent arrivals of mass casualties.
Just half of Gaza's 36 general hospitals are partially functioning, according to the UN agency.
Abu Salamiyah warned of a humanitarian catastrophe due to a fuel crisis posing a direct threat to hospital operations, desalination plants and the water supply system.
He accused Israel of "trickle-feeding" fuel to Gaza's hospitals.
As fuel in Gaza runs dry, non-profit organizations (NGOs) including Save the Children are concerned that the looming threat will affect their ability to provide clean drinking water.
In a statement Wednesday, Save the Children said its clean drinking water, which serves roughly 44,000 children each day, could be gone in "a matter of days" and will increase the risk of waterborne illnesses such as cholera, diarrhea and dysentery.
"Access to safe water is a fundamental human right," said Ahmad Alhendawi, the group's regional director for the Middle East, Eastern Europe and North Africa.
"Not only is food and aid being withheld to an entire population on the brink — fuel that powers the systems that are critical for survival has not been allowed in for four months."
COGAT, the Israeli military aid co-ordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about fuel shortages at Gaza's medical facilities and the risk to patients.
Oxygen risk
Abu Salamiyah said Al Shifa's dialysis department had been shut down to protect the intensive care unit and operating rooms, which can't be without electricity for even a few minutes.
There are around 100 premature babies in Gaza City hospitals whose lives are at serious risk, he said. Before the war, there were 110 incubators in northern Gaza compared to about 40 now, said Abu Salamiyah.
"Oxygen stations will stop working. A hospital without oxygen is no longer a hospital. The lab and blood banks will shut down, and the blood units in the refrigerators will spoil," Abu Salamiyah said, adding that the hospital could become "a graveyard for those inside."
The Israeli military official said such depictions were creating "a false narrative." UN bodies working in Gaza decide how to distribute fuel and he did not know if fuel had reached Al Shifa yet, he said.
Officials at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis are also wondering how they will cope with the fuel crisis. The hospital needs 4,500 litres of fuel per day and it now has only 3,000 litres, enough for 24 hours, said hospital spokesperson Mohammed Sakr.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel's response has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians.
Doctors are performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning. The sweat from staff is dripping into patients' wounds, he said.
Earlier this year, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza for nearly three months, before partly lifting it. Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid, something Hamas denies.
"You can have the best hospital staff on the planet, but if they are denied the medicines and the painkillers and now the very means for a hospital to have light ... it becomes an impossibility," said James Elder, a spokesperson for UN children's agency UNICEF recently returned from Gaza.
With files from CBC News