Gazans Fear Crisis After Four Days of Blockade

Israel Agrees to Single Shipment Of Fuel, Other Aid

GAZA CITY, Jan. 21 -- Four days into an Israeli blockade that has cut off food and fuel to the Gaza Strip, residents of the strip contemplated Monday how long it would be until disaster hit. One family of 13, shivering in the cold, counted its eight remaining candles. A bakery that normally feeds thousands had three days' worth of flour.

Hospital generators with enough fuel for three days and no spare parts powered incubators in which twin boys born 2 1/2 months prematurely were being kept alive, their thin chests heaving convulsively.

Israel agreed Monday to allow in a one-time shipment of fuel, food and medicine on Tuesday, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak telephoned Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to appeal on behalf of Gaza's 1.5 million people. But Israel gave no indication when it planned to fully lift the blockade, imposed Friday in response to escalating rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory.

In the neonatal intensive care unit of Gaza City's main hospital Monday, physician Radwan Hassouna tapped the plastic incubator of Karam al-Namy, one of the 1 1/2 -pound twins, and ticked off the electrical equipment keeping the baby alive.

"He has a ventilator. He has an oxygenator. He has photo therapy," or light to keep him from developing jaundice, Hassouna said. An intravenous pump, he added. And monitors.

If the generators broke down, Karam and his twin brother, Kareem, would die in an instant, Hassouna said.

Leaving the hospital after seeing his young sons, Ashraf al-Namy said he feared he would never see them alive again. "I'm afraid when the electricity goes off," he said. "They only live on artificial respiration. What is going to happen to them?"

Israel closed the border crossings into Gaza on Friday to enforce its demand that the armed Hamas movement that controls Gaza bring a halt to rocket attacks into Israeli territory.

From Tuesday to Friday last week, more than 150 rockets were fired from Gaza. None caused any fatalities, although Palestinian gunmen killed an Ecuadoran farmhand working in a field near Gaza on Tuesday, the day Israeli forces unleashed large-scale ground and air assaults against targets in the northern part of the strip.

Israeli military operations from Tuesday to Sunday killed more than 30 people in Gaza, most of them gunmen, Palestinian officials said.

"As far as I'm concerned, Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern Israel live in peace," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told lawmakers from his Kadima party earlier Monday.

Rocket attacks into Israel have declined from more than 30 a day last week to five on Sunday. By late Monday, at least eight rockets and mortar shells had landed.