The official explained in a press release that secondary generators were barely enough to operate three sensitive main sections and only for a few more hours due to fuel shortages caused by the total blockade imposed by Israel. N
He pointed out that 16 of the 35 hospitals had stopped working due to Israeli bombing or fuel shortages, and others were on the verge of stopping.
In Al-Shifa, only one operating room, the emergency room and the intensive care unit are still in operation, confirmed Dr. Yousef Abu El Rish, Director of the Gaza Hospital Network.
Without electricity, the facility would become a mass grave, warned Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah in conversation with the television channel CNN.
“It’s that simple. If we can’t keep the respirators running. If we cannot take our seriously injured patients to the operating room, we will have no choice but to die here,” he emphasized.
“The hospital mortuary is completely full, we have sent emergency calls to everyone,” Al-Shifa director Muhammad Abu Silmeyeh said during an interview with Qatari news channel Al Jazeera.
Spokesman for the strip’s health authorities, Ashraf Al-Qudra, revealed yesterday that the Indonesian hospital in the north of the territory was also left in the dark after the main generator was shut down due to a lack of fuel.
Zafer Milhem, head of the Palestinian Energy Authority, had denounced the day before that thousands of wounded, sick and newborn babies were at risk of death because of a lack of electricity and fuel in medical facilities in the area.
Words cannot describe the humanitarian catastrophe that is occurring there, he told the Egyptian television channel Cairo News.
“We are not talking about supplying power plants, we just want to supply the hospitals with electricity so that they can fulfill their obligations to care for the injured,” he emphasized.
However, after a meeting on Friday with American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that he would not allow the import of diesel fuel into the enclave. mem/rob