The Palestinian Health Ministry is warning Gazan residents not to use cooking oil in place of gasoline in their vehicles, a practice that has become widespread since fuel has been curtailed to the Gaza Strip.

The ministry is warning that using cooking oil mixed with regular gasoline leaves dangerous residues, and causes damage to the environment, according to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

About 15,000 private cars are on the roads in Gaza, in addition to 350 buses and 3,700 trucks. These vehicles require more than half a million liters of fuel every day, the ministry said.

When cooking oil is used as car fuel, it is not entirely burned and this leaves a residue with cancerous materials, which affect the health of the public and pollute the air, causing respiration problems, a ministry statement said.

“Using cooking oil as an alternative to gasoline has caused the price of cooking oil to go up by 30 percent and this is adding to the suffering of the civilians because of the continuing rise in prices, and cooking oil is a basic product,” it said.

The ministry said Israel’s limits on fuel entering Gaza was inhuman, against international law and constituted a collective punishment on the people of Gaza. It called on the international community to pressure Israel into stopping restrictions on fuel in the Gaza Strip.

Israel restricted passage of cargo into Gaza after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a military coup last June. Israel designates Hamas a terror organization and is pressuring the government into ceding power. It also wants to stop the smuggling of weapons and terrorists into Gaza, and to stop the continuing barrage of rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip onto nearby Israeli residential areas.