RAFAH, 25 Oct: The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees warned Wednesday that without immediate deliveries of fuel it will soon have to sharply curtail relief operations across the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded and devastated by Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.
The warning came as hospitals in Gaza struggled to treat masses of wounded with dwindling resources. Health officials said the death toll was soaring as Israeli jets pounded the territory overnight into Wednesday.
The Health Ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, said airstrikes killed more than 750 people over the past 24 hours. Officials did not give a breakdown of how many killed were militants. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.
The Israeli military said its strikes killed militants and destroyed tunnels, command centers, weapons storehouses and other military targets. It accuses Hamas of magnifying the suffering of Gazan civilians by hiding among them.
Hamas and other militants have launched unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict started.
The rising death toll in Gaza — following a reported 704 killed the day before — was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come if Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.
The force of a blast in the southern city of Rafah flipped and crumpled cars and left tattered pieces of clothing hanging in the branches of a tree.
Another strike destroyed a bakery and killed at least 10 people in a refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, the Hamas-run government said. As witnesses described the attack to an AP journalist, a projectile whistled overhead followed by two bangs — another airstrike hit nearby. Men ran through rubble-strewn streets carrying the injured.
In the wreckage of about 15 homes in Khan Younis, a backhoe peeled away layers of broken concrete tangled with rebar where a home once stood. A worker in an orange vest waded into the rubble and lifted a dead baby from the ruins. He wrapped the infant in a blanket. A teddy bear lay in the rubble nearby.
The U.N. says about 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now internally displaced, with nearly half of them crowded into U.N. shelters.
Gaza’s residents have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.
In recent days, Israel allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to come over the border with Egypt but barred deliveries of fuel — needed to power hospital generators — to keep it out of Hamas’ hands.
The U.N. said it had managed to deliver some of the aid in recent days to hospitals treating the wounded. But the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, said it was running out of fuel.
Officials said they were forced to reduce their operations as they rationed what little fuel they had.
More than half of Gaza’s primary healthcare facilities, and roughly a third of its hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.
Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical aid and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases. (AP)