UPDATE 2 - Unavailability of fuel to halt humanitarian, communication, banking activities in Gaza within days: UN humanitarian office

UPDATES WITH REMARKS FROM WHO

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The UN humanitarian office on Friday warned that if the supply of fuel does not resume immediately it will affect all life-critical sectors in Gaza.

"Humanitarian operations cannot run without fuel. Unless the supply of fuel resumes immediately, humanitarian, communication, and banking activities will halt within days," Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) sub-office in Gaza, told a UN briefing in Geneva.

"Protection of civilians, humanitarian assets and supplies with assurance from all parties to the conflict remain a major concern," Petropoulos added.

The current availability of fuel will enable communication service providers to continue operating for another 24 hours, after which network disruptions will commence, he stressed.

Regarding health facilities, he said five hospitals run by the Health Ministry, 28 ambulances, 17 primary health care centers run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and other partners, five field hospitals, 10 mobile clinics, and 23 medical facilities in Al Mawasi will run out of fuel within the next 24 hours.

He warned that both the World Food Program (WFP) and UNRWA will run out of food for distribution in the coming few days, adding that WFP’s main warehouse is "inaccessible, and no aid has entered from Rafah since two days."

"Water production in Rafah has stopped," Petropoulos said, stressing that 450,000 people have been left with very limited access to safe drinking water as the main water production in North Gaza and Gaza city governorates has shut down.

On solid waste collection and sanitation services, he said  the Al Junaina sewage pumping station in East Rafah is already no longer accessible due to the military operation, impacting 80,000 people.

- Agencies 'scraping bottom of barrel' as no fuel, aid enter Gaza

Hamish Young, UNICEF's senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, warned that the situation in Gaza "will worsen" for children if humanitarian operations are not revived in the next 48 hours.

"For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel," Young said in the briefing. "This is already a huge issue for the population and for all humanitarian actors but in a matter of days, if not corrected, the lack of fuel could grind humanitarian operations to a halt."

He stressed that the maternity wards in Emirati hospital cannot function without fuel, putting not only about 80 babies born there daily at risk but also pregnant women who are "left without options for safe delivery of their newborns."

"Over 14,000 children have reportedly been killed already -- a ground offensive in Rafah will undoubtedly result in this number increasing dramatically," he warned.

He underscored the immediate need for fuel and resumption of aid flow, and added: "Rafah must not be invaded. And children must be protected, not killed."

- Without fuel 'whole system collapses'

The World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Margaret Harris, for her part, warned that the whole system is set to collapse if fuel remains unavailable.

"Without fuel, no matter what everybody's done, the whole system collapses," Harris said.

She noted that WHO is now a distributor of fuel to all hospitals, and the UN agency distributed fuel to the Nasser Medical Complex and two other hospitals.

"We've also had to suspend missions to the north currently to conserve fuel to try to ensure that we can provide as much fuel as possible to the hospitals in the south to keep them going," Harris stressed.

On Monday, Israeli forces issued evacuation orders for Palestinians in eastern Rafah, a move widely seen as a prelude to Israel's long-feared attack on the city, home to some 1.5 million displaced Palestinians.

A day later, Israeli forces seized control of the Rafah border crossing linking Gaza with Egypt, closing it to all traffic.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October, which killed less than 1,200 people.

More than 34,900 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of whom have been women and children. Over 78,500 others have been injured, according to Palestinian health authorities. Thousands remain missing.

Seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN. Most of the displaced have sought refuge in Rafah following earlier Israeli evacuation orders.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in the coastal enclave, and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians.