A severe shortage of cooking gas in the Gaza Strip caused many bakeries outside Gaza City to shut down on Sunday because the bakers were unable to use their ovens. Gaza officials said that if the gas supply is not renewed, all bakeries in the Strip will close by the end of the week.
Cooking gas is not available for private use either, creating a shortage of supplies in Gaza homes. Some families are using fire to cook in tabun ovens being built due to the shortage, and are using as fuel any available flammable object, including wood, plastic and alcohol.
Israel stopped supplying gas to Gaza several days ago. Israel is the sole source of Gaza's fuel, but supplies have been sporadic since Palestinian militants attacked the Nahal Oz fuel depot on the border with Gaza this month, killing two Israeli workers.
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A group of Palestinians, some of them armed, prevented United Nations tankers from filling up at the Nahal Oz depot on Sunday, after Israel agreed to transfer diesel fuel and gasoline to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The Palestinian group blocking the tankers included farmers and fishermen demanding that they too, not just the UNRWA, should receive gasoline.
The gas and diesel shortage is continuing to cause damage. Many of the water pumps that farmers use to irrigate their crops have either stopped working or are working partially, damaging some of the crops. Likewise, the fishermen don't have enough fuel to get out to sea.
Also in Gaza Sunday, Palestinian militants fired four Qassam rockets on the western Negev, causing no injuries or damage.
Meanwhile, the Nitzanei Shalom industrial zone on Israel's border with the West Bank reopened on Sunday, two days after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli security guards there.
Eighty-five percent of the workers at the eight factories at Nitzanei Shalom came to work Sunday, according to the industrial zone's administration. Some 500 of the workers are Palestinians who live in the nearby West Bank city of Tul Karm and about 200 are Jewish.
The factories, along with the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Defense Forces, began a joint investigation Sunday into the terror attack. The gunman fled to Tul Karm after killing security guards Eli Wasserman and Shimon Mizrahi at close range.
IDF officials expressed surprise that the attack led to the death of two guards, even though it involved a lone terrorist facing three armed guards and the security guards had undergone a training exercise a month ago.
An IDF investigation has uncovered a series of security foul-ups, from broken security cameras to inappropriate behavior on the part of the guards. One guard ran away when he heard gunfire, another guard left his weapon in his car and a third was standing with his back to the gate.
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