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Fuel shortage halts Gaza’s sole power plant

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The sole power plant in the Gaza Strip has stopped generating electricity due to severe fuel shortage, the electricity firm in the Israeli-besieged Palestinian territory says.

“The plant stopped working on Friday morning due to a lack of fuel caused by Israel’s closure of the [so-called] Kerem Shalom crossing,” said an official at the electricity company in Gaza.

Gaza’s power plant stopped working only 12 days after it was brought back to life following a seventeen-week shutdown.

In early November, Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil, a senior Hamas energy official, announced that the production of electricity had halted in Gaza due to a fuel crisis, blaming the power outage on the Israeli regime’s crackdown on the underground tunnels.

In recent months, fuel and electricity shortages in Gaza have worsened as the Egyptian military has blocked supply tunnels leading into the region. The underground tunnels serve as a lifeline for Gaza’s population of over 1.7 million.

Gaza has been under the Israeli siege since 2007, a situation that has made the Palestinians desperately dependent on goods coming through the tunnels.

The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO), which represents more than 130 Palestinian civil society organizations, has called on the international community to end the continuous Israeli siege.

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