Above photo: AA.
The ministry confirmed that Israel is continuing to permit the looting of humanitarian aid convoys by armed gangs.
The Health Ministry in Gaza warned on 7 January that the medical sector in the strip is facing a disaster due to crippling shortages of essential supplies and humanitarian aid.
The ministry released a statement warning “of a real disaster that is sweeping hospitals, oxygen stations, medicine refrigerators, and nurseries in all health facilities remaining in operation in the Gaza Strip.”
“There is no fuel stock in hospitals due to the policy of dripping in fuel that the occupation has been following in bringing in since the beginning of the war on Gaza. The occupation forces aid convoys, including fuel vehicles, to take roads full of thieves and bandits to steal them under its protection,” the statement added.
Israel has shuttered all border crossings leading into the Gaza Strip and has subjected aid convoys to severe and arbitrary restrictions, worsening the dire humanitarian catastrophe and famine.
Israeli forces in Gaza have been permitting gangs to steal aid upon their entry into the strip. These gangs have been demanding protection money from international relief groups in exchange for the aid, which often ends up in Israeli army warehouses, Haaretz newspaper confirmed in November.
Aid organizations are barred by Israeli troops from traveling along safer routes, subjecting their convoys to looting and making it extremely difficult to deliver aid to Palestinians in need.
Gaza’s Interior Ministry has set up a police force called the Arrow Unit in order to deal with these looting gangs that cooperate with Israel.
“The last shipment of fuel was stolen yesterday; it was on its way to hospitals through international organizations,” the Health Ministry statement went on to say.
“We reiterate our appeal to all concerned, international, and humanitarian organizations to urgently intervene to provide fuel and secure it to operate generators in hospitals and health centers in the Gaza Strip,” it added.
Israel has been waging a brutal war against hospitals in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north – where medical facilities have been bombed, besieged, and stormed repeatedly.
North Gaza’s Al-Awda Hospital is now the last functional medical facility in the area, as Kamal Adwan Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital have been rendered out of service by Israeli attacks and incursions, which have destroyed essential departments, oxygen stations, and water tanks.
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who was abducted by Israeli troops on 27 December and taken to the Sde Teiman detention camp, is in deteriorating condition due to being tortured, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Tel Aviv has confirmed Abu Safia’s detention, claiming he is under investigation for “holding a rank” in Hamas.