Fears for Gaza hospitals as fuel and aid run low

Medics warn all hospitals in the Palestinian territory could ‘stop working’ within 48 hours, the alert sounded a day after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister.

Doctors provide medical care to two young victims inside the Kamal Adwan hospital following an Israeli strike that hit an area near the medical establishment in Beit Layia in the northern Gaza Strip early on Thursday, reportedly leaving dozens of people killed or unaccounted for. Picture: AFP)

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday hospitals have only two days’ fuel left before they must restrict services, after the UN warned aid delivery to the war-devastated territory is being crippled.

The warning came a day after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant more than a year into the Gaza war.

The United Nations and others have repeatedly decried humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza where Israel said Friday it had killed two commanders involved in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war.

Gaza medics said an overnight Israeli raid on Beit Lahia and nearby Jabalia resulted in dozens killed or missing.

Marwan al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, told reporters all hospitals in the Palestinian territory “will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of fuel entry”.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned about the safety and wellbeing of 80 patients, including eight in the intensive care unit” at Kamal Adwan hospital, one of just two partly operating in northern Gaza.

Kamal Adwan director Hossam Abu Safia told AFP it was “deliberately hit by Israeli shelling for the second day” Friday and that “one doctor and some patients were injured”.

Late Thursday, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, Muhannad Hadi, said: “The delivery of critical aid across Gaza, including food, water, fuel and medical supplies, is grinding to a halt.”

He said that for more than six weeks Israeli authorities “have been banning commercial imports” while “a surge in armed looting” has hit aid convoys.

‘Absurd and false’

Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping, Israel on October 6 began an air and ground operation in Jabalia and then expanded it to Beit Lahia.

Gaza’s health ministry says the operation has killed thousands. The UN says more than 100,000 have been displaced from the area, and an official told the Security Council last week that people “are effectively starving”.

Issuing the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, The Hague-based ICC said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe they bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and crimes against humanity including over “the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies”.

Mourners on Friday at Al-Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital, include a young boy …

… A Palestinian girl places her hands on multiple victims … Picture: Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP

… the grief of a heartbroken young girls is clear …

… Palestinians watch as bodies of people killed in an Israeli strike the previous night are brought to the hospital. Pictures: Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP

A furious Netanyahu said: “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and accusations made against it.” He said the judges were “driven by anti-Semitic hatred of Israel”. On Friday, he thanked his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban for inviting him to visit in defiance of the ICC warrant, which Orban branded “political”.

Hungary currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel’s top military supplier, called the warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, but other world leaders supported the court.

Australia is refusing to join the US and Israel in condemning the ­decision by the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the ­Albanese government suggests it would follow the court’s rulings as “a point of principle”.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said Netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot in the country.

Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday discussed efforts towards a ceasefire in Lebanon, the White House said.

Mohammed Deif. Picture: Handout / AFP

Warrant for Hamas chief

The ICC also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, saying it had grounds to suspect him of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the attacks on Israel that sparked the war, and including “sexual and gender-based violence” against hostages.

Israel said it killed Deif in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.

On Thursday, a UN representative said an Israeli raid on Palmyra in Syria this week was “likely the deadliest” by Israel on the country so far. On Friday, a war monitor said the strikes killed 92 pro-Iran fighters.

Israel again bombed Gaza on Friday. In Gaza City, just south of Jabalia, one man who said he took his cousins to hospital after a strike urged “the world … to put an end” to the war.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the town of Burj al-Shamali, on the outskirts of Tyre in southern Lebanon, on Friday. Picture: Kawnat Haju / AFP

Rocket fire wounds four UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

The war expanded to Lebanon in late September when Israel escalated air strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah and later sent ground troops into southern Lebanon, after nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border exchanges which Hezbollah said were in support of Hamas.

Lebanon says more than 3580 people have been killed in the country, most of them since late September.

A strike on Baalbek in the east killed the director of Dar al-Amal university hospital and six colleagues, the health ministry said late Friday.

Israeli strikes again targeted Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold and south Lebanon, the official National News Agency said.

UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon have reported being fired on numerous times, blaming both Israel and “non-state” actors.

On Friday, Rome said Hezbollah was probably behind rocket fire that lightly wounded four Italian peacekeepers.

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike targeting a neighbourhood in southern Beirut on Friday. Picture: Ibrahim Amro / AFP)

Residents stand next to a crater at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the village of Makneh in eastern Lebanon on Thursday, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. Picture: Sam Skaineh / AFP

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “deep indignation and concern” over “new attacks suffered by the Italian headquarters of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) in southern Lebanon”.

“These attacks are unacceptable,” she said in a statement, calling on “the parties on the ground to guarantee, at all times, the safety of UNIFIL soldiers and to collaborate to quickly identify those responsible”.

Meloni did not attribute blame but Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said the rockets were “fired by Hezbollah” and called on both Israel and Lebanon to protect the base.

An Italian foreign ministry spokesman said Rome would await an investigation by UNIFIL.

The force said “two 122-mm rockets struck the Sector West Headquarters” in Shamaa, around 5km from the Israeli border.

The village has been a battleground between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters for around a week.

The rockets were “likely launched by Hezbollah or affiliated groups”, the force said, adding that it was “the third attack on this UNIFIL base in Shamaa in a week”.

The four peacekeepers, whose wounds were not life-threatening, were “receiving treatment at the base hospital”, it said.