TIMES OF ISRAEL
Medics in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is carrying out punishing airstrikes aimed at destroying the ruling Hamas terror group, warned Sunday that thousands could die as hospitals packed with wounded people run desperately low on fuel and basic supplies. Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave struggled to find food, water and safety ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive in the war sparked by Hamas’s shock deadly attack on southern Israel last week.
Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of US warships in the region, positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said would be a broad campaign to dismantle the terror group, which rules the coastal enclave. A week of blistering airstrikes have demolished entire neighborhoods but failed to stem rocket fire by terrorists into Israel.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 2,329 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted, more than in the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted over six weeks. That makes it the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides.
More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians massacred in Hamas’s October 7 devastating assault on Israeli border towns, a music festival and military posts. It is the deadliest war for Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Egypt and Syria.
About 1,000 civilians were killed as 1,800-2,000 Hamas gunmen seized Israeli border communities. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 were slaughtered at the outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists, in what US President Joe Biden has highlighted as “the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Gaza hospitals are expected to run out of generator fuel within two days, according to the UN, which said that this would endanger the lives of thousands of patients. Gaza’s sole power plant shut down for lack of fuel after Israel completely sealed off the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) border with the territory following the Hamas onslaught.
In Nasser Hospital, in the southern town of Khan Younis, intensive care rooms are packed with wounded patients, most of them children under the age of 3. Hundreds of people with severe blast injuries have come to the hospital, where fuel is expected to run out by Monday, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, a consultant at the critical care complex.
There are 35 patients in the ICU who depend on ventilators to stay alive and another 60 on dialysis. If fuel runs out, “it means the whole health system will be shut down,” he said.
