Gaza hospitals, shelters cut back on services as fuel runs short

“The situation is getting worse day by day, hour by hour," said Mohammad Aburayya, a 47-year-old doctor, who has been sheltering with his family at a United Nations facility for nearly two weeks. “I don’t remember the last time I saw electricity."

On Thursday, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said fuel was urgently needed to maintain vital humanitarian operations. “Current stocks are almost completely exhausted, forcing lifesaving services to come to a halt. This includes the supply of piped water as well as fuel for the health sector, bakeries, and generators," it said in a report.

Israel cut off all supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 attacks by militant group Hamas that killed 1,400 Israelis. It allowed the delivery of small amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza starting last Saturday but Israel has opposed the delivery of fuel to Gaza out of concerns that Hamas would use it for military purposes.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said that the thousands of rockets Hamas is firing at Israel show that Gaza has plenty of fuel. He also pointed to a now-deleted post on social-media platform X by the U.N. agency that it had received reports of people purporting to be from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza taking fuel from the agency’s compound in Gaza City. The agency later said that no such looting took place.

The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said this week that efforts would be made to provide access to fuel in Gaza where needed, without allowing it to reach Hamas, but didn’t provide more details.

Electricity was scarce in Gaza even before the war. Roughly one-third of the strip’s electricity supply came from a power plant that ran on industrial diesel fuel imported from Israel, while two-thirds came from electricity lines that extended from Israel, according to Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit organization focused on Gaza. Residents and businesses relying only on the municipal electricity grid got power for roughly 12 to 15 hours a day. People who could afford it used backup generators that were also dependent on imported diesel, during long power blackouts. Many hospitals, businesses and other facilities, including households, also installed solar panels for electricity.

Now, aid and rights groups are warning of a complete blackout, at a time when the enclave’s more than two million people are under intensifying airstrikes by Israel. The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry said Thursday that 7,028 people had been killed in Gaza. The figures couldn’t be independently verified.

Already a dozen out of 35 hospitals in Gaza and around two-thirds of 72 primary healthcare clinics have shut down due to damage from airstrikes or lack of fuel, according to the U.N.

At Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, lights in the corridors and nonclinical areas have been switched off. “The only places running 24 hours a day are the operating rooms and intensive care units," says Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon from Doctors Without Borders who is working there.

He estimated that roughly one-third of around 1,600 patients would die should the generator go out. “Between those in intensive care and those who need repeated surgeries…there is no plan," he said.

Yousef Abu Al-Rish, deputy minister of the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that it has been calling on people to give any fuel to hospitals. The ministry has asked the police to requisition fuel from gas stations.

Israel says Hamas has enough fuel but isn’t distributing it to civilians. Earlier this week, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted a photo on X of a fuel storage location in Gaza near the Rafah border crossing. “This is what over half a million liters of diesel looks like," but “Hamas keeps claiming it does not have enough fuel to support hospitals, bakeries," he wrote.

Salama Marouf, head of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza, disputed Israel’s claim and said the fuel belonged to gas-station owners in Gaza.

According to Gisha, more than 30 million liters of diesel fuel entered Gaza in August alone.

Israel never supplied Gaza with power for free, said the nonprofit group’s executive director, Tania Hary. Before the war, the Qatari government financed the diesel supply for Gaza’s sole power plant, while the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, paid for the electricity that Gaza received from Israel via the electricity lines, she said.

The World Health Organization, with the support of the U.N., delivered 34,000 liters of fuel on Tuesday to four major hospitals in southern Gaza as well as the Palestine Red Crescent Society to sustain its ambulance services. However, it warned the fuel was only enough for a little over 24 hours.

Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for the eastern Mediterranean at the WHO, said that the WHO and the U.N. haven’t been able to get security guarantees from Israeli authorities to deliver fuel from reserves already in the strip to hospitals in northern Gaza. “We keep advocating, keep pleading," he said.

A spokeswoman for Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Of more than 1.4 million people in Gaza who have had to flee their homes, nearly 630,000 people are sheltering at 150 U.N. designated shelters, according to the U.N. At many locations, generators are being directed to keep only the water stations running and the toilets flushing, to conserve fuel.

The wife and five children of Aburayya, the Palestinian doctor, fled their home in Gaza City on Oct. 13 for a U.N. facility in Khan Younis. With around 30,000 people on the site, the family has been sleeping outside on blankets and eating canned food but regularly skipping meals.

Aburayya struggles to charge his phone, as charging stations at the center are crowded with people guarding their devices. After sunset, the premises turn completely dark.

“The bathroom is the worst part because it needs electricity and water," said his 18-year-old daughter Maryam. “Neither work well."

Elsewhere, bakeries are going out of business due to lack of fuel and continued airstrikes. Roads were emptying of cars. Many doctors have been biking to work.

The price of whatever fuel there is left has soared. Gas was $5 per liter compared with around $1.70 earlier this week, said Mohamed Sharif, a taxi driver in Gaza City. He spent five hours before he found one liter. Since then, his car has been parked and he has moved from location to location trying to find shelter.

Beshara Shahada, a 61-year-old owner of the Families Bakeries Company in the Rimal neighborhood in central Gaza, closed his bakery on Tuesday after running out of diesel for his oven. After standing in a line that stretched for several blocks, people left hungry and empty-handed.

“We are waiting for the government or any aid agency to send us fuel, but there’s nothing we can do," he said.

Write to Chao Deng at chao.deng@wsj.com