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CAIRO: The Gaza Strip has only “24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left”, the regional head of the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) told AFP on Monday (Oct 16), as pressure mounts for assistance to arrive.
If aid is not allowed into the besieged territory, doctors will have to “prepare death certificates for their patients”, WHO regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed al-Mandhari, said in an interview with AFP.
Monday marked 10 days of relentless Israeli air strikes on targets in the Palestinian enclave, in retaliation for an Oct 7 attack by Gaza-based Hamas militants who killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel.
Gaza is now barrelling towards “a real catastrophe”, Mandhari said.
The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said that about 2,750 people have been killed and 9,700 wounded while, according to the UN, 1 million have been displaced.
Power outages threaten to cripple life-support systems, from seawater desalination plants to food refrigeration and hospital incubators.
Even everyday functions – from going to the toilet, showering and washing clothes – are almost impossible, locals say.
With emergency responders overwhelmed, doctors working around the clock and a dire lack of space, “bodies cannot be properly taken care of”, Mandhari said.
Overcrowding has paralysed hospitals, where “intensive care units, operating rooms, emergency services and other wings” are all on the brink of collapse, he said.
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz on Sunday said that water supplies to southern Gaza had been switched back on, a week after Israel announced a “complete siege” and cut water, power and fuel supplies to the territory where it wants to crush Hamas.
Depriving civilians of goods essential for survival is banned under international law, the UN human rights chief has said.
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