Fuel shortage puts 18 Gaza ambulances out of service: Palestinian Red Crescent

GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Thursday that 18 ambulances in the Gaza Strip have stopped operating because of a fuel shortage.

The number “represents 36% of the PRCS’s ambulance fleet capacity,” it wrote on X.

PRCS indicated that it “has not received its daily share of gasoline from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for approximately eight days.”

The aid group warned about “a decline in its ability to provide ambulance and emergency services in the coming days due to the fuel shortage, with the Israeli occupation continuing to keep the Rafah border crossing closed for about 52 days.”​​​​​​​

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas.

More than 37,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 86,400 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over eight months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala