Five days after Israel shut down its cargo crossing with the Palestinian territory, Gaza’s only power plant shut down on Saturday due to fuel shortage.
The fuel shortage, according to Mohammed Thabet, a spokesman for the electricity company, has caused the power plant in Gaza to stop operating.
According to Mr. Thabet, the electrical supply will drastically decrease to just four hours every day.
Typically, trucks from Egypt or Israel, which has maintained a blockade on the enclave since since the terrorist group Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, bring diesel for the power plant to the facility.
According to information from the UN’s humanitarian organisation Ocha, only 10 hours of energy were provided daily on average to Gaza’s 2.3 million population last week.
The electrical company had earlier on Saturday stated that a blackout would “impact all public utilities and vital infrastructure and worsen the humanitarian crisis.”
“All parties to promptly act and permit the entrance of fuel deliveries for the power plant to operate,” the company pleaded.
The military was preparing for retaliation after the arrest of two prominent members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the occupied West Bank when Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza.
Islamic Jihad chief Tayseer Al Jabari was killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Friday, which sparked the organisation to fire a number of rockets at Israel.
There are concerns that Israel and the militant organisations in Gaza would engage in another full-scale war as a result of the ongoing exchange of fire on Saturday.
