More than 1,750 children have already been killed by Israeli strikes against the Gaza Strip, according to Palestine’s health ministry.

Hospitals packed with patients and displaced people are running low on medical supplies and fuel for generators, forcing doctors to perform surgeries with sewing needles, using kitchen vinegar as a disinfectant, and without anesthesia.

"We have currently 120 neonates in incubators, out of which we have 70 neonates with mechanical ventilation, and of course, this is where we are extremely concerned," said UNICEF spokesman Jonathan Crickx.

Power is one of the main worries for the seven specialist wards across Gaza treating premature babies to help with breathing and provide critical support, for example when their organs are not developed enough.

"If they [babies] are put in mechanical ventilation incubators, by definition, if you cut the electricity, we are worried about their lives," the spokesman told AFP.

Whole families, including pregnant women, have been killed in strikes and each day parents can be seen in the devastated streets carrying the bodies of infants in white shrouds.

"We had tried in vain to save an unborn infant from a woman killed in an airstrike on her family's home," said the Najjar Hospital's doctors in Rafah on Thursday.

Hours earlier, eight children were killed as they slept in a house in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Shortages in critical supplies, including ventilators, are forcing doctors to ration treatment, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel from Khan Yunis’s Nasser Hospital. Dozens of patients continue to arrive and are treated in crowded, darkened corridors, as hospitals preserve electricity for intensive care units and incubators for newborns.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Qandeel told the AP. “Every day, if we receive 10 severely injured patients we have to manage with maybe three or five ICU beds available.”

Amid widespread electricity cuts, at least 130 premature babies are at “grave risk” because of a generator fuel shortage, the WHO said. "Seven hospitals in northern Gaza have been forced to shut down due to damage from strikes, lack of power and supplies, or Israeli evacuation orders," they added. 

The WHO also said that about 1,000 people needing dialysis will also be at risk if the generators stop.

"The situation in Gaza is terrible," said UNRWA Operations’s director in Gaza, warning that humanitarian supplies are very limited and food and drinking water have become scarce.

“We need a sustainable supply line of aid to avoid a disaster in the strip,” he added.

On Saturday, 20 aid trucks were allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing. However, the convoy carried about four percent of an average day’s imports before the war and “a fraction of what is needed after 13 days of complete siege," the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said.

Palestinians sheltering in UN-run schools and tent camps are running low on food and drinking dirty water. A power blackout has crippled water and sanitation systems.

Cases of chicken pox, scabies, and diarrhea are on the rise because of the lack of clean water, OCHA said.