A main hospital in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip has stopped offering key services to patients because of fuel shortage and amid heavy bombardment of areas around the facility by the Israeli regime.
Al-Quds Hospital, located in Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in northern Gaza, said on Wednesday that it had shut down most operations to be able “to ration fuel use and ensure a minimum level of services in the coming days.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), which runs the hospital, said the facility had turned off its main electricity generator because of fuel shortage.
It added that only a small generator was providing two hours of electricity per day to patients and 14,000 people who have been sheltering in the hospital amid the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
PRCS spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh said hospital authorities feared it could become a direct target of Israeli airstrikes in the coming days.
“Most of the buildings around [the] hospital have been almost completely destroyed. The bombings are getting closer and closer to the hospital, and we fear a direct hit to the hospital,” Farsakh said.
Health authorities in Gaza had warned in recent weeks that hospitals in the small territory may run out of fuel if the Israeli regime does not allow fuel to enter Gaza.
Israeli has tightened its siege on Gaza, a Palestinian territory of over 2.3 million people on the Mediterranean Sea, since it launched attacks on it on October 7 to retaliate an operation by Gaza-based resistance fighters.
More than 10,500 people have been killed in the attacks while over 30,000 have been either injured or remain unaccounted for.
Israel bombed a key hospital in Gaza in the second week of its attacks, killing some 500 people, many of them women and children who had sought shelter in the hospital.
The Israeli air raid on al-Ahli Arab Hospital sparked international condemnation and was described as a “massacre.”
