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Palestinians carried canisters filled with cooking gas on Tuesday in Gaza City.

JERUSALEM — Israel started transferring fuel, medical supplies and some food into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, easing a tight border closing that aid officials had warned could lead to a health and food crisis.

The supplies that entered Tuesday included industrial diesel for Gaza’s only power plant, which was shut on Sunday for lack of fuel, as well as diesel for generators and cooking gas, and shipments of medical supplies and food from the World Food Program, according to Capt. Shadi Yassin, a spokesman for the Coordination and Liaison Administration, the Israeli agency that oversees the Gaza crossings.

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, announced Monday night that he was lifting some of the restrictions imposed on Gaza last Thursday night, when Israel ordered the closing of border crossings, halting all imports. The closings were in response to last week’s intense rocket fire against Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas.

Mr. Barak’s decision on Monday to allow in a week’s supply of fuel for the Gaza power station, as well as 50 trucks of food and medical supplies, came as international alarm mounted and criticism of Israel intensified. Aid officials warned that Gaza, gripped by fuel and electricity shortages, was two or three days from a health and food crisis.

In Geneva on Tuesday, Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the International Committee for the Red Cross, said the situation remained grave. “There is a major risk of a total collapse of all the infrastructure” of Gaza, she said. The organization was hoping to deliver one truckload of medical supplies to Gaza later in the day, she said.

Israeli officials said they had decided to allow some supplies across the border after reviewing the situation in Gaza and seeing a reduction in rocket fire. They denied that international pressure was a factor, and have insisted they will not allow a relief crisis to develop in Gaza.

Israel and Egypt continued to provide electricity to Gaza by cable, but the closing of the power station cut Gaza’s supply by at least a quarter, or by as much as 43 percent, according to different estimates of the area’s needs. By Monday night, parts of Gaza City, where about a third of Gaza’s 1.5 million people live, had been blacked out for 24 hours.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, said Monday that if the crossings were not reopened it would have to suspend its food aid to 860,000 Gaza residents by Wednesday or Thursday because it was running out of the nylon bags it uses to measure out and distribute staples like flour.

Oxfam, the international aid agency, warned in a statement Monday afternoon that Gaza’s water and sewerage systems were “a matter of hours from almost total shutdown as stocks of fuel to run vital pumps runs out.”

Mahmoud Daher, a health officer for the World Health Organization in Gaza, said Monday that there was a shortage of more than a hundred types of medications, and that there were no spare parts to fix broken generators. “There is no crisis yet, but there will be one if the situation continues,” Mr. Daher said. “We are on the edge.”

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, commissioner for external relations of the European Commission, on Monday condemned the rocket fire into Israel, but also condemned what she called Israel’s “collective punishment of the people of Gaza.”

A spokeswoman for the French Foreign Ministry said Monday that “the measures taken amount to collective punishment of the entire civilian population,” and the foreign secretary for Britain, David Miliband, and its international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, issued a joint statement saying that “Israeli security and justice for Palestinians will not be achieved by cutting off fuel or by firing rockets.”

Expressions of concern also came from the Arab world. The president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, telephoned both the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, and Mr. Barak, according to the official Egyptian news agency, MENA. Thirteen of the 50 aid trucks Israel said it would allow into Gaza on Tuesday are to carry assistance from Jordan.

On Monday, Israeli officials said Israel was not the one inflicting the collective punishment, but Hamas.

“It is very interesting that we didn’t hear these condemnations when the rockets were falling,” said Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Defense. “Is that not collective punishment?” he said, adding that the situation in Sderot, an Israeli town near Gaza and the target of most of the militants’ rockets, had become “intolerable.”

Despite the growing pressure, Israeli officials insisted Monday that the Hamas leadership in Gaza was exaggerating the effects of the blockade.

Arye Mekel, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said, “What we are seeing now is a staged production by Hamas.”

Given the amount of electricity provided by Israel and Egypt, there was no justification for the widespread blackouts, Mr. Mekel said, even with a shortage of fuel.

Israel said it was still not planning to allow the resumption of deliveries of gasoline for private cars. At a meeting with members of his Kadima Party on Monday, Mr. Olmert said, “As far as I’m concerned, the residents of Gaza can walk if they don’t have petrol for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that won’t let people in the south of Israel live in safety.”

The militant Islamic group Hamas seized control of Gaza last June, after routing its rival, Fatah, in a brief factional war. On Monday, people in Gaza blamed both Hamas and Israel for their situation.

“The Hamas government brought us poverty, but Israel is the enemy,” said Nidal Shehada, 22, a taxi driver, who had enough fuel to last till the end of the day.

Um Muhammad Zibda, a woman in her early 40s, said, “The rockets are a pretext.” Israel’s real goal, she said, was to bring about the collapse of the Hamas government.

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