Dwindling Fuel Supplies for Gaza’s Hospital Generators Put Premature Babies in Incubators at Risk 

Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2023. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2023. (Reuters)
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Dwindling Fuel Supplies for Gaza’s Hospital Generators Put Premature Babies in Incubators at Risk 

Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2023. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 23, 2023. (Reuters)

A premature baby squirms inside a glass incubator in the neonatal ward of al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip. He cries out as intravenous lines are connected to his tiny body. A ventilator helps him breathe as a catheter delivers medication and monitors flash his fragile vital signs.

His life hinges on the constant flow of electricity, which is in danger of running out imminently unless the hospital can get more fuel for its generators. Once the generators stop, hospital director Iyad Abu Zahar fears that the babies in the ward, unable to breathe on their own, will perish.

“The responsibility on us is huge,” he said.

Doctors treating premature babies across Gaza are grappling with similar fears. At least 130 premature babies are at “grave risk” across six neonatal units, aid workers said. The dangerous fuel shortages are caused by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which started — along with airstrikes — after Hamas militants attacked Israeli towns on Oct. 7.

At least 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are unable to access essential health services, and some 5,500 are due to give birth in the coming month, according to the World Health Organization.

At least seven of the almost 30 hospitals have been forced to shut down due to damage from relentless Israeli strikes and lack of power, water and other supplies. Doctors in the remaining hospitals said they are on the brink. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Sunday it has enough fuel to last three days to serve critical needs.

“The world cannot simply look on as these babies are killed by the siege on Gaza ... A failure to act is to sentence these babies to death,” said Melanie Ward, chief executive of the Medical Aid for Palestinians aid group.

None of the 20 aid trucks that crossed into Gaza on Saturday, the first since the siege was imposed, contained fuel, amid Israeli fears it will end up in Hamas' hands. Limited fuel supplies inside Gaza were being sent to hospital generators.

Seven tankers took fuel from a UN depot on the Gaza side of the border, but it was unclear if any of that was destined for the hospitals.

But will eventually run out if more is not permitted to enter.

Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesman, said 150,000 liters (40,000 gallons) of fuel are required to offer basic services in Gaza’s five main hospitals.

Abu Zahar worries about how long his facility can hold out.

“If the generator stops, which we are expecting in the coming few hours due to the heavy demands of different departments in the hospital, the incubators in the intensive care unit will be in a very critical situation,” he said.

Guillemette Thomas, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in the Palestinian territories, said some of the babies could die within hours, and others in a couple of days, if they don’t receive the special care and medication they urgently need.

“It’s sure that these babies are in danger,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s a real emergency to take care of these babies, as it is an emergency to take care of the population of Gaza who are suffering from these bombings since the past two weeks.”

The hospital must care for patients in northern and central Gaza since several hospitals shut down, he said, forcing it to more than double its patient capacity. That also puts a strain on the limited electricity.

Nisma al-Ayubi brought her newborn daughter to the hospital from Nuseirat, where she was recently displaced from northern Gaza, after she suffered from oxygen deprivation and extreme pain, she said.

The baby girl was born three days ago but soon developed complications. “The hospital is lacking in supplies,” she said, speaking from al-Aqsa. “We are afraid that if the situation gets worse, there won’t be any medicine left to treat our kids.”

The problems are exacerbated by the dirty water many have been forced to use since Israel cut off the water supply. Abu Zahar says mothers are mixing baby formula with the contaminated water to feed their infants. It has contributed to the rise in critical cases in the ward.

In the al-Awda Hospital, a private facility in northern Jabalia, up to 50 babies are born almost every day, said hospital director Ahmed Muhanna. The hospital received an evacuation order from the Israeli military, but continued to work.

“The situation is tragic in every sense of the word,” he said. “We have recorded a large deficit in emergency medicines and anesthetic,” as well as other medical supplies.

To ration dwindling supplies, Muhanna said all scheduled operations were stopped and the hospital devoted all its resources to emergencies and childbirths. Complex neo-natal cases are sent to al-Aqsa.

Al-Awda has enough fuel to last four days at most, Muhanna said. “We have appealed to many international institutions, the World Health Organization, to supply hospitals with fuel, but to no avail so far,” he said.

Thomas said women have already given birth in UN-run schools where tens of thousands of displaced people have sought shelter.

“These women are in danger, and the babies are in danger right now,” she said. “That’s a really critical situation.”



Early US Intelligence Report Suggests US Strikes Only Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Months

A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
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Early US Intelligence Report Suggests US Strikes Only Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Months

A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)
A woman walks past a residential building that was hit in an Israeli strike covered with a big Iranian flag, in Tehran on June 25, 2025. (AFP)

A US intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after US strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.” On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “New intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated: “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.”

Gabbard’s office declined to respond to questions about the details of the new intelligence, or whether it would be declassified and released publicly.

The office of the director of national intelligence coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The DIA did not respond to requests for comment.

The US has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the US strikes and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the US strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where US B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back Trump defended his characterization of the strike's impact.

“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “These leakers are professional stabbers.”

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the US and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from US intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the US assessment was shared with reporters.

“It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said Tuesday in a televised statement: “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed ... we brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program." He said the US joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use. The US and others assessed prior to the US strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the US has cut off Iran's ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the UN nuclear watchdog.

What experts say Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials.”

American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the US airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former US intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the UN nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites. After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan’s facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran’s control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb,” Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.