GAZA: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday that 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 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense 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 Zionist entity said Friday it had killed two commanders involved in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war. Gaza medics said an overnight raid on the cities of 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 obstruction of fuel entry”. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of 80 patients, including 8 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 Zionist shelling for the second day” Friday and that “one doctor and some patients were injured”. Late Thursday, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator 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, Zionist authorities “have been banning commercial imports” while “a surge in armed looting” has hit aid convoys.

Vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping, Zionists 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”. A furious Netanyahu said: “(Zionist entity) rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions and accusations made against it.” He said the judges were “driven by anti-Semitic hatred”.

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 Zionist top military supplier, called the warrants against Ziiiist leaders “outrageous”, but other world leaders supported the court. 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 to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon, the White House said. - AFP