U.N. officials warned that aid groups, water treatment plants and bakeries in the enclave are running dangerously low on fuel.
As U.N. officials say hospitals in Gaza are running dangerously low on fuel, Hamas is maintaining a stockpile of more than 200,000 gallons of fuel for the rockets it fires into Israel and the generators that provide clean air and electricity to its network of underground tunnels, according to U.S. officials, current and former Israeli officials and academics.
“Hamas has its own supply stockpile of fuel,” Blinken told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “If it cared a whit about the people of Gaza, it would make sure itself that it used that fuel to have the hospitals be able to operate the incubators, stay turned on, etc. But, of course, it doesn’t.”
Israeli military officials estimate that Hamas has 200,000 gallons of diesel in storage. Experts say the exact amount of fuel the group has is impossible to know.
The Israel Defense Forces released an intercept Wednesday of a call between what it said was a commander of Hamas’ Western Jabaliya Battalion, a Gazan resident and the director of the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza. The commander said Hamas is taking fuel from the hospital’s stocks, according to the IDF. NBC News has not independently authenticated the call.