Gaza Hospital Generators Fail as Israel Restricts Oil, Fuel and Spare Parts

September 13, 2026 

Premature babies at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis are facing life-threatening conditions. (Photo: via QNN)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

Gaza hospitals are losing electricity as generators fail amid severe shortages of engine oil, fuel and spare parts needed for repairs.

Key Takeaways

Gaza’s Health Ministry said several hospital generators have stopped operating, while remaining units are running continuously under severe mechanical strain.

At Nasser Hospital, one of four generators is out of service and electricity is being rotated between buildings, delaying critical respiratory treatment.

Restrictions have pushed engine oil prices as high as $1,300 per liter locally, while electricity costs for Gaza households have reportedly increased around twentyfold.

Hospital Generators Begin Shutting Down

Several electricity generators at hospitals across the Gaza Strip have stopped operating because of shortages of engine oil, fuel and spare parts, Gaza’s Health Ministry warned on Sunday.

The ministry said generators had failed at several facilities in recent days, leaving hospitals increasingly unable to maintain reliable electricity for life-saving departments.

“The remaining generators are operating around the clock under difficult technical and mechanical conditions and are unable to meet the electricity needs of all life-saving departments,” the ministry said.

The limited quantities of engine oil allowed into Gaza are sufficient only for emergency requirements, according to the ministry, while hospitals collectively need approximately 2,500 liters per month.

It warned that additional generators could fail unless engine oil and other essential supplies were allowed in urgently.

Generators have become the principal source of electricity for Gaza’s hospitals since Israel cut the territory’s grid electricity following October 7, 2023.

Restrictions on the entry of fuel, engine oil and replacement parts have subsequently made maintaining those generators increasingly difficult.

Nasser Hospital Rations Electricity

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, one of Gaza’s largest functioning medical facilities, doctors are already rationing electricity between buildings because the generators cannot sustain continuous power throughout the complex.

Internal medicine specialist Ahmed al-Nabris told Reuters news agency on Saturday that one of the hospital’s four generators was out of service and the two largest of the three remaining units were under severe strain.

“Patients are in severe danger, because any power cut puts their lives at serious risk,” al-Nabris said.

Generators would normally receive an oil change after approximately 250 operating hours. Because of shortages, Nasser Hospital has been forced to operate them for around 1,000 hours before changing the oil.

The hospital’s electricity infrastructure had already suffered extensive damage. Al-Nabris said a solar power system destroyed during an Israeli military raid in early 2024 had never been replaced, while the hospital also lost its main and backup generators.

Fatima Abu Taima, a patient suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, told Reuters that patients requiring ventilators or nebulizers sometimes have to wait until electricity returns to their department.

“We keep waiting, counting down the seconds and minutes,” she reportedly said. “You have to wait for the electricity to come back.”

Engine Oil Reaches $1,300 per Liter

The generator crisis extends beyond hospitals to ambulances, water infrastructure and the limited neighborhood electricity networks on which Gaza’s population increasingly depends.

Médecins Sans Frontières warned in August that restrictions on engine oil and spare parts were placing thousands of Palestinians at increased risk of illness and death by undermining hospital generators, ambulances, water pumps and water trucks.

The shortages have forced humanitarian organizations to seek supplies on Gaza’s local market, where residents said engine oil had risen from approximately $3 per liter before the war to as much as $1,300.

The price shock has also made electricity increasingly inaccessible to Palestinian families.

Private and neighborhood generators provide some households with several hours of power, but residents told Reuters that electricity costs had increased around twentyfold in recent months.

At least two-thirds of Gaza’s approximately two million Palestinians were still living in more than 1,000 displacement sites earlier this year, according to Palestinian and UN records cited by Reuters, with severe shortages of electricity and water.

The latest Health Ministry warning comes as Israel’s genocidal war has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, wounded over 174,000 and devastated much of Gaza’s civilian and medical infrastructure.

(PC, AA, Reuters)