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| - Four new coronavirus cases may not sound like much, but they have sparked fear and a lockdown in Gaza, the crowded Palestinian enclave once more engaged in clashes with Israel. The infections have come as Israeli warplanes and tanks have struck targets in Gaza almost every night in retaliation for rockets fired and airborne incendiary devices drifting across the border. The Islamist Hamas movement which runs the Israeli-blockaded strip announced late Monday that four members of the same family living in the Al-Mughazi refugee camp had been infected. The new cases, outside Gaza's official COVID-19 quarantine areas, have raised alarm bells in the sealed-off enclave that has weathered the pandemic relatively well so far. "A full 48-hour curfew has been imposed on all governorates in Gaza," interior ministry spokesman Iyad Al-Bazam told a press conference at the Al-Shifa hospital. "All workplaces, educational institutions, mosques, wedding halls and clubs will be closed" and gatherings banned, he said. The shutdown comes at a time Israel has already closed the border and banned all fishing off Gaza, in retaliation for the so-called balloon bombs setting Israeli farming and scrublands on fire. During the night, Gazans rushed to bakeries in the hope of finding bread for the duration of the lockdown. With Gaza deprived of electricity and pounded almost nightly by air strikes, the outbreak was one more hardship for the territory's two million inhabitants, half of whom live below the poverty line. "When they announced that the coronavirus had spread to Gaza, it was scary and stressful," local man Adham Fares said. "I hurried to buy bread for the 48-hour curfew," he told AFP while queueing in the night outside a Gaza City bakery. Another man, Saeed Mohamadeen, 30, said he had "rushed out to buy some medicine for my daughter at the pharmacy before it closed". Since the start of the pandemic, the teeming Gaza Strip has recorded only around 100 cases of COVID-19 and one death, an elderly woman. Those figures are among the lowest in the world and have not been challenged so far by independent health sources. The narrow coastal strip is sealed off by a formidable security barrier on its landward side, with just two crossing points, one to Israel and one to Egypt. On its western side is the Mediterranean Sea, heavily patrolled by Israeli gunboats which have recently also enforced the total ban on fishing vessels during the unrest. From the start of the pandemic the crossings were closed, with few exceptions. Those authorised to enter the Palestinian territory were isolated for three weeks in official quarantine centres. Since the fighting has flared again, Israel has tightened its Gaza blockade by closing the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and stopping fuel deliveries. As a result, the only power plant in the Gaza Strip closed last week, leaving the enclave dependent on the less than four hours of electricity a day it gets from Israel. The cutback could have "devastating effects", the UN warned Tuesday. Amin Aoud, a young Gazan, said that unless the people of the strip complied with the lockdown instructions, its already sorely stretched medical services could collapse. "The virus will spread and there will be a disaster here unprecedented in the world," he said. az-gl/alv/hj/scw/fz
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