(CNN) – Humanitarian organizations are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as doctors warn that Israel’s fuel blockade will soon result in many more vulnerable and injured babies dying in hospitals. According to one agency, at least 2,000 children have died in Gaza in recent weeks.
Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in the besieged strip, while its Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said this Monday that the country was preparing for a “multilateral operation” against the extremist group Hamas, which controls Gaza “from the air, land and sea.”
Israeli leaders have vowed to end Hamas in response to the deadly terrorist attacks and kidnappings on October 7 that left 1,400 people, mostly civilians, dead and more than 200 taken hostage.
This Monday, Hamas released two Israeli citizens, while international pressure increased to secure the release of the remaining hostages brought to Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, isolated from the world by a near-total blockade, Israeli airstrikes have decimated entire neighborhoods and leveled homes, schools and mosques. CNN drone footage showed the extent of destruction in parts of the territory on Monday, with entire streets leveled in Gaza City’s Al Rimal district and a series of destroyed buildings known as Al-Zahra Towers in central Gaza. were destroyed.
Humanitarian organization Save the Children said on Monday that more than a million children in Gaza were “trapped” with no safe place to go, and warned of the devastating impact of a lack of medicine and electricity to vital health infrastructure in the enclave.
“At least 2,000 children have died in Gaza in the last 17 days, and another 27 in the West Bank,” the humanitarian organization said on Monday.
“We call on all parties to take immediate action to protect the lives of children and call on the international community to support these efforts,” Save the Children said, adding that Israeli airstrikes “indiscriminately kill and injure children “.
These buildings reduced to rubble by Israeli airstrikes are seen in Gaza on October 23, 2023. (Source: Mohammed Zaanoun/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images)
The latest figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip suggest the death toll from Israeli attacks is at least 5,087, including 2,055 children.
“The health system [de Gaza] has reached the worst condition in its history,” Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said in a statement released early Tuesday.
Fuel is a lifesaver
Fuel means life in Gaza. Without fuel, water cannot be pumped or desalinated, and the generators that power hospitals — which keep incubators, ventilators and dialysis machines running and sterilize surgical equipment — will fail.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, 12 hospitals and 32 medical centers are out of service following Israeli attacks and fuel shortages. According to Hamas, the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza lost power early Tuesday due to a lack of fuel.
Despite the urgency, no tank trucks entered the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian Rafah border crossing over the weekend as part of a humanitarian aid convoy, according to Israeli and UN authorities.
Israel has repeatedly said Hamas would provide fuel for its own war efforts, including rocket attacks.
A medical worker cares for a Palestinian premature baby lying in an incubator in the maternity ward of Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Oct. 22, 2023. (Source: Mohammed Al-Masri/Portal)
This Monday, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN that Israel would not allow fuel into the Gaza Strip even if all the hostages were released.
“At the moment we have no interest in having more fuel used for Hamas’s military machine, and we have not approved fuel, we have approved medicine, we have approved water. We have approved food, we have not approved anything else,” Regev said.
“The government’s decision is that the fuel will not come in because it is stolen by Hamas and they will use it to fuel the rockets that will be fired against Israel to kill our people.”
However, US State Department spokesman Matt Miller said on Monday that while the United Nations is “closely monitoring” whether there are signs that Hamas is diverting humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip, there is no evidence so far.
Hospitals could become “mass graves”.
According to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority based in the occupied West Bank, outbreaks of smallpox, scabies and diarrhea have occurred in the Gaza Strip due to the deteriorating health environment, lack of sanitation and the consumption of water from unsafe sources.
Hospitals are on the verge of collapse and are operating at more than 150% capacity. The situation is so dire that operations are being carried out without anesthesia and, in some cases, under the illumination of telephone lamps, the health ministry added.
About 50,000 pregnant women have difficulty accessing health care, there are about 166 unsafe births per day and more than 5,000 women will give birth in the next month, he added.
Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital – the largest hospital in the enclave – has enough fuel for up to two days, chief surgeon Marwan Abusada said on Monday.
Conditions in Al-Shifa are terrible, and another doctor explained that without electricity, the hospital “will be nothing more than a mass grave” and “nothing can be done for these wounded.”
British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah told CNN overnight that the “system is falling apart” and without a ceasefire and a proper humanitarian corridor “there will be an even greater catastrophe than what already exists here.”
A baby is cared for in an incubator at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza, on October 23, 2023. (Source: Mai Yaghi/AFP/Getty Images)
Abu-Sittah said the overwhelmed hospital had run out of bandages for more than 100 patients with burns covering more than 40% of their bodies. More than 150 patients with serious injuries who are on ventilators rely on electricity to stay alive, he added.
Hospitals in Gaza face similar situations.
A neonatologist who works at a hospital in southern Gaza told CNN on Monday that premature babies in need of oxygen would die if the enclave does not receive urgent fuel supplies.
Hatem Edhair, head of the neonatal intensive care unit at the Nasser Medical Complex, said all non-emergency facilities were turned off, as were lights and air conditioning.
He said there are 11 babies in his neonatal intensive care unit – most weighing less than 1.5 kilograms – and that admission rates are rising as northern Gaza residents flee south.
This Monday, 20 more trucks carrying essential supplies entered the Gaza Strip, but humanitarian organizations warn that the current pace of deliveries will not be enough to meet the needs of the more than 2 million people living in the enclave.
According to the United Nations, the area typically receives 455 aid trucks daily. This means the weekend deliveries leave Gaza more than 7,200 aid trucks short of what it would normally have received between October 7 and October 22, according to CNN calculations.
Hostages released
Relatives welcomed the release of two hostages from Hamas custody on Monday, as relatives of hundreds held in unknown conditions in Gaza face an agonizing wait for news of their relatives being held at gunpoint.
Israeli citizens Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, were released after mediation by Qatar and Egypt, according to two Israeli officials and two other sources briefed on the matter.
According to a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, the women were abducted from their homes on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Their spouses – Cooper’s 85-year-old husband Amiram and Lifshitz’s 83-year-old husband Oded – were kidnapped along with them and remain held by Hamas, he added.
About a quarter of Nir Oz’s residents were killed or taken hostage in the Hamas attack.
His release follows the release of two American hostages, Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan, who were released last Friday.
Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, one of Lifshitz’s grandchildren said she could “hug her grandchildren.”
According to several sources, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz were released by Hamas. (Source: Forum “Hostages and Missing Families”)
“She talks, she can walk, she can hug her grandchildren, which makes us very happy,” Daniel Lifshitz said after seeing his grandmother in Tel Aviv.
Asked about the fate of his grandfather held by Hamas, Lifshitz said: “My grandmother has returned, but now I am more afraid for my grandfather, who is still there, and no man has been released yet.”
This Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby rejected calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, telling CNN that Hamas must first release the hostages.
“We do not believe this is the time for a ceasefire. Israel has the right to defend itself. They still have a lot of work to do to pursue the Hamas leaders. We will continue to support them or provide them with more security assistance,” Kirby said.
CNN’s Abeer Salman, Isa Soares, Amy Cassidy, Eyad Kourdi, Mihir Melwani, Sophie Jeong, Pierre Meilhan, Mitchell McCluskey, Alex Hardie, Tamar Michaelis and Hadas Gold contributed to this report.