The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports that Gaza’s sole power station was shut down on Saturday evening due to lack of fuel supplies. It is the third closure in the past month.
Parts of the Gaza Strip were plunged into darkness, but limited power was available in some locations.
Fuel deliveries through underground tunnels from Egypt have been stopped in recent weeks and the ruling Hamas government and Egyptian authorities are still seeking an agreement on an official channel for supplies. Until such an agreement is signed, some 1.7 million residents of the coastal strip have been facing up to 18-hour blackouts each day.
The new power outage comes as Gaza faces a series of deadly attacks by Israeli warplanes. The Gaza Strip has been pummeled by Israeli air strikes since Friday, killing 16 Palestinian gunmen who were in the process of launching rockets into Israel, and wounding more than 40.