GAZA – Omar Abu Atwa, a 30-year-old driver, was walking home from work one day in central Gaza last month when an explosion shook the street around him. Bloodied and confused, he was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, where doctors examined injuries to his hand.
As he waited for an X-ray, the lights cut out, rendering much of the hospital’s medical equipment inoperable, including the machine doctors needed to inspect his wound.
After a six-hour wait in the ward, Omar left tired and frustrated, without an X-ray or proper treatment for his injured hand. This is a repeated experience for patients in Gaza, including those rushed to hospital to receive potentially lifesaving surgery. “I waited for many hours inside the hospital hoping for electricity to return and the medical devices to start working again. During that time, I was in pain and anxious because I did not know the nature of my injury or whether my condition required urgent medical intervention”, he told Al Jazeera.
“I saw children, elderly people and injured individuals waiting just as I was. Some needed medical tests, while others kept asking about when electricity would return so they could continue their treatment. The crisis affected everyone”. Israel’s genocide has already caused immense damage to Gaza’s healthcare sector, with Israeli bombing since October 7, 2023 destroying 38 hospitals and 96 primary healthcare centres or rendering them inoperable.
Bombing has almost completely decimated Gaza’s national grid, with about 90 percent of power lines destroyed, forcing hospitals to rely on generators for power. But an ongoing blockade on Gaza has resulted in severe shortages of fuel needed for generators, which power essential life-saving medical equipment at hospitals such as ventilators, incubators and monitoring devices. The use of non-original engine oils due to the blockade has resulted in generators malfunctioning or affected their performance.
It comes as Israel continues its near-daily air raids on Gaza with at least 1,092 people killed and 3,507 injured since a so-called “ceasefire” came into effect in October 2025. The consequential routine power cuts have rendered hospitals semi-dysfunctional and affected thousands of patients and medical staff in Gaza, where the flow of patients caused by new waves of bombings and disease continues.
Most of Al-Aqsa’s main generators went out of service in early May 2026, when doctors and nurses were already struggling to cope, leaving the hospital to use secondary generators and solar energy or simply cut back on operations. (Aljazeera)
