Palestinian officials and Gaza-based right groups warned on Wednesday of a severe humanitarian crisis after a power plant, responsible for 35 percent of Gazans' needs, had stopped generation due to a fuel shortage.

Mohamed Abu Daff, chief of a committee working to lift the Israeli blockade on Gaza, said the world's humanitarian organizations "must intervene to end the ongoing crisis".

He made the remarks during his speech addressing the Gazan children who were protesting the frequent power outage in the coastal enclave.

Outside the United Nations headquarters in Gaza city, dozens of children waved Palestinian flags, held posters urging international help, and chanted slogans condemning the humiliation they are subjected to.

Representatives from Gaza's health and education sectors as well as students joined the children's demonstration.

Abu Daf called on the Arab countries, mainly Egypt, to immediately intervene and help the Gazans to put an end to the frequent blackout that affects all aspects of their lives.

The power crisis reminds the narrow and poor enclave of the tight blockade imposed by Israel after the Islamic Hamas movement seized control of it in June 2007. Although Israel eased some restrictions of the blockade in June 2010, essential border crossings are still under tight control.

The crisis, according to some Palestinian officials, goes back as far as two weeks ago, when the smuggled industrial fuel for power generation started to decline in its amount of inflow.

The shortage of the fuel, which is brought in from Egypt though underground tunnels, affected not only the power station but also the gas stations, where a real humanitarian crisis is imminent. Oil product is rare in Gaza and few vehicles are seen driving in the streets.

Mohamed Abadla, spokesman for the gas stations union in Gaza, told Xinhua that the crisis remains unresolved despite the intensive appeals to officials and smugglers to allow more fuel to come into the enclave.

"The cause of the crisis is the shortage of fuel in Egypt's Sinai area, as well as the decision of the Egyptian dealers to raise the prices of the fuel," said Abadla, adding that the high taxes imposed by the ruling Hamas is another reason.

The severe shortage of the fuel has forced many gas stations to shut down since Tuesday. The main power station that supplies for 35 percent of the enclave's electricity needs turned off its turbines on the same day.

The Gaza Strip gets its electricity and power supplies from three major sources. The biggest is Israeli electricity which covers the northern and eastern areas, followed by Egyptian electricity which covers the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis. The power station covers Gaza city, which has a population of 800,000 people, according to official figures.

The power station used to depend on Israel's industrial fuel for generation, which was halted several months ago when the Israeli companies stopped pumping Gaza-bound fuel.

The European Union and other donors used to pay these companies for the fuel that kept the Gaza power station running. But in January 2011, the Gaza power company decided to stop using Israel' s fuel and instead resort to the smuggled Egyptian fuel.

Spokesman of the Gaza electricity company Jamal Derdesawi told Xinhua that the power station shutdown deepened the crisis, which has been ongoing since 2006.

He warned that the situation in the Gaza Strip "has become very complicated," adding that the crisis may cause many aspects of Gazans' lives to collapse, particularly in the hospitals where electricity is needed to operate those live-saving machines.

Medhat Abbas, an official in the Hamas-run ministry of health told Xinhua that the various medical sections in the hospitals " are about to stop its services soon due to the ongoing blackout... Right now we depend on what we have of the fuel in our stores."

The Gaza-based Palestinian Human Rights Center expressed its deep concerns in a press statement over the mounting crisis of power outage, adding that there will be disastrous consequences on the people's health as well as the environment.