Gaza’s power authority has said the blockaded enclave’s sole power plant is out of service due to a lack of fuel, leaving the Palestinian territory without electricity after Israel cut off supplies in retaliation to the recent attacks by Hamas, the resistance group that runs Gaza.
Officials in Gaza said that the enclave now faces humanitarian catastrophe with the power plant shutting down completely due to the depletion of fuel.
“The only power plant in the Gaza Strip stopped functioning at 2:00 p.m. (1100 GMT),” the authority’s head Jalal Ismail said in a statement, having earlier warned that it was running short of fuel.
Two days ago, Israel has imposed a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip.
“We’ve decided to cut the supply of water, electricity and fuel, and now their local power plant has collapsed and there’s no electricity in Gaza,” the Israeli energy minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement. “We’ll continue tightening the siege until the Hamas threat on Israel and the world is removed.”
Israeli forces continue pounding the Gaza Strip for a fifth day, killing at least 1,055 Palestinians. The death toll in Israel has climbed to 1,200 people.
